Raped woman 'feared for her life', court told

A woman who was raped by two men on Brighton beach while a third filmed the incident said she thought she was going to be killed in the attack, a court has heard.

Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, an Iranian national living in Crewe, Cheshire, and 25-year-old Ibrahim Alshafe, an Egyptian living in Horsham, each deny two counts of rape.

Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, also an Egyptian living in Horsham, is accused of having filmed the attack. He denies four counts of rape as a secondary party "encouraging the rape by his actions at the scene, including filming it".

The trial of the three men, who are asylum seekers, began at Hove Crown Court on Tuesday.

The court heard on Wednesday that the men targeted the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, after she became separated from her friends while on a girls' night out.

Prosecutors allege Alshafe and Ahmadi repeatedly raped the woman on Brighton beach in the early hours of 4 October last year, while Al-Danasurt filmed the attack.

In a recording of an interview played to jurors, the woman was asked what she could remember from the night of the alleged attack.

She said she had been at a bar with friends until about 03:00 GMT before going to a nightclub near the beach.

"I remember taking drinks off this Asian man but then I remember being on my hands and knees in the toilet being sick," she said.

"After that I don't remember anything."

Later in the interview, she said: "I closed my eyes because I thought 'oh my god, they're actually going to kill me', I can hear all these voices and I can't stop them."

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At the time of the alleged offences, all three defendants knew each other and were residents of a hotel near Horsham housing asylum seekers, jurors heard.

Al-Danasurt also denies a fifth count of "sharing intimate films" without the woman's consent.

The charge relates to an allegation that Al-Danasurt sent recordings of the alleged rapes to Ahmadi's phone shortly after the attack.

The trial continues.

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