CSE trial: Barristers claim rape accused men ‘wrongly identified’

The authorities are allowing reporting of the latest Muslim rape gang trial; males from Rotherham on trial at the Crown Court Sheffield. There’s not much coming into the newspapers but the Rotherham Advertiser has this part of the defence case this afternoon. 

BARRISTERS defending two men accused of rape have claimed the alleged victim has wrongly identified the pair.

Nabeel Kurshid (34), of Weetwood Road, Rotherham, (below left in grey) and Iqlak Yousaf (34), (below right in green) of Tooker Road, Rotherham, are accused of raping the girl between 2002 and 2003 when she was 14 or 15.

The prosecution say Yousaf was known as Iqqy and Kurshid as Nabby.

Another unidentified man, known as Shiraz, is also said to have been involved in the rape which allegedly occurred in a lay-by near Sherwood Forest. 

The woman, now aged 31, said she was confident she had identified the right men.

Ms Julia Smart, defending Kurshid, who she said was also known as Nabeel Akhtar Kurshid, claims the complainant has wrongly identified her client after seeing his Facebook account, which was under the name Nabeel Akhtar.

The woman disputed this and said the Nabby from her teenage years and the “Facebook Nabby” are the same person, adding: “I would never forget.”

Mr David McGonigal, defending for Yousaf said to the woman: “You told police that your memory had been affected by some drugs you had become addicted to and you took a lot of when you were 16 to 17 — cannabis and amphetamine.”

The woman replied: “Specific little details, the main bits, I never forget. It was just tiniest details — descriptions of body parts, scars, that were not coming back to me.”

Mr McGonigal suggested she had met Yousaf in 2004 — after the Sherwood Forest incident — while he was working as a taxi driver — which the woman denied.

Mr McGonigal said: “Are you mixing him up?” She replied: “Everything I am saying is correct.”

Mr McGonigal said: “You were not so comatose you didn’t know what was going on?”

She said: “Yes that’s correct.”

He said: “The next person has laid down with you — you have not said you didn’t want to have sex.”

She replied: “I didn’t say anything.

The barrister added: “You have made a mistake in relation to identifying Iqqy as the person you slept with and took you to Sherwood Forest.”

She answered: “I made no mistake. I am confident this is the person from the incident.”

Re-examining the woman, prosecutor Ms Michelle Colborne, asked: “How quickly after Nabby got off was the next man there?”

She replied: “Not even a minute.”

In other words, it wasn’t my client but another man, but if it was my client it wasn’t rape because you didn’t say no. This sadly isn’t a case where there would have been any DNA evidence taken and stored.