Beach rape 'cynical, predatory, callous', court told

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Eddie Mitchell Two men in a composite image. One is wearing grey clothing and another is wearing a black jacket. The man in grey appears to be handcuffed to another person's arm.

Two men repeatedly raped a woman on Brighton beach while a third man filmed the "cynical, predatory and callous" attack, a court has heard.

Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, an Egyptian living in Horsham, West Sussex, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of raping the woman on 4 October 2025 and to sharing intimate films of her.

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.

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

The jury heard that the defendants targeted the woman in the early hours after she became separated from her friends while on a night out.

Al-Danasurt is accused of filming the alleged rapes, later sending the recordings to Ahmadi's phone.

The court heard that he invited officers to look at the videos during a police interview, which he said would show that he had done nothing wrong.

Jurors were told that they would be shown the footage during the trial.

Eddie Mitchell A man in a white uniform leads a man in dark clothing, who he is handcuffed to, out the side of a white prison van. They are pictured behind a grey wire fence.

Prosecutor Hanna Llewellyn-Waters told jurors that the complainant was "repeatedly abused for sexual gratification and entertainment".

She said that the complainant was intoxicated and "to all intents and purposes, incapacitated" at the time.

Llewellyn-Waters added: "Al-Danasurt himself in his police interview recognised that she was unable to even stand without support."

Judge Christine Henson KC told jurors that they should not "fall into the trap" of thinking someone is "less worthy of belief" if they consumed alcohol or illegal drugs.

"The lived experience of a sexual assault may well not be remembered in a neat, consistent, forensic parcel so you will want to bear that in mind," Henson said.

Jurors were told on Tuesday that Alshafe and Ahmadi took the woman to a location behind a beach shack and raped her "repeatedly".

Although she could not definitively say whether she was also raped by Al-Danasurt, the prosecution alleges he was "fully aware of what was happening".

Llewellyn-Waters said that DNA from Alshafe and Ahmadi matched samples from a forensic medical examination of the woman and forensic evidence related to Al-Danasurt was inconclusive.

The court heard that the woman said to police that she was spat on, kicked and her throat was grabbed during the alleged attacks, and that the men were laughing.

Llewellyn-Waters said that the woman "crawled off the beach" and was captured on CCTV leaving the beach alongside Alshafe.

"Google Translate entered into his telephone within a couple of minutes of them coming into shot details him telling her to 'unlock it', presumably her phone," she said.

The prosecutor said she was "far from wanting to give him her number".

All three defendants knew each other before the incident and were housed by the Home Office in the same hotel at the time, the jury heard.

The court was told that Ahmadi left the hotel the day after the alleged rapes and moved to an address in Crewe, where he was later arrested, without Home Office approval.

The jury was also told that Alshafe and Ahmadi entered the UK via small boat three months before the alleged rapes and that Al-Danasurt had entered the country a year before.

The trial is expected to continue for four weeks.