Man accused of rape 'posed for the boys' - court

A man "posed for the boys" as he was being filmed during an alleged rape of a woman on Brighton beach, jurors have heard.

Iranian national Abdulla Ahmadi and Egyptian national Ibrahim Alshafe are accused of repeatedly raping the woman in the early hours of 4 October, while Karin Al-Danasurt, also from Egypt, videoed the incident.

Prosecutor Hanna Llewellyn-Waters KC told Ahmadi: "You were all in it together, weren't you? You were egging each other on. You were like a pack?" But Ahmadi, speaking via an interpreter, replied "No".

All three men, who are asylum seekers, have denied the charges against them at Hove Crown Court.

Previously, jurors heard the men targeted the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, after she was separated from her friends on a night out.

Llewellyn-Waters asked Ahmadi: "What was the attraction to you of taking someone who was so drunk into the darkness of the beach?"

The defendant replied: "She is not drunk. Thirty to forty minutes later she came back up by herself. Nobody supported her."

He said when he and Alshafe left the woman, she kissed them.

"She had no problems at all and if she had any problems, she wouldn't kiss us", he said.

Llewellyn-Waters said: "I am suggesting to you the evidence you've given is an absolute pack of lies. You got her on the beach and did what you wanted to her."

Ahmadi replied: "No we didn't do that. I didn't do that. I didn't rape her."

The prosecutor added: "You degraded her and thought it was funny?"

"No," Ahmadi replied.

"You hid your face because you were raping her but you posed for the boys, didn't you?" the prosecutor said.

"I don't remember," he replied.

Under cross-examination, Ahmadi said police woke him in his cell at 03:00 and threatened him with seven years in prison if he did not sign a statement.

Llewellyn-Waters said: "Lies trip out of your mouth, don't they?"

Ahmadi replied: "I am not lying. There is a camera."

The prosecutor asked: "Are you suggesting this is a document… drafted somehow by police?"

Ahmadi said there had been a misunderstanding between him and his interpreter, or his interpreter and his solicitor.

The prosecutor told Ahmadi: "This is a defence statement. You are not saying this has not been explained to you?"

He replied: "I say it is my signature but I am not sure this is my case."

Ahmadi, 26, from Crewe, Cheshire, and 25-year-old Alshafe, from Horsham, each deny two counts of rape.

Al-Danasurt, 20, from Horsham, denies four counts of rape as a secondary party "encouraging the rape by his actions at the scene, including filming it".

He denies a fifth count of "sharing intimate films" without the complainant's consent.

Jurors heard at the time of the offences, all three men knew each other and lived at the same hotel near Horsham, which was Home Office-approved accommodation for asylum seekers.

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