Ebrahim Ahmed Khalil, 56, who grabbed a 21-year-old’s breast and was arrested for sexual assault, spent two days in custody before he went to court as the Egyptian embassy failed to claim diplomatic immunity.
Regina Naughton, prosecuting at City of London Magistrates’ Court, told the Daily Mail: “The issue is whether or not he has diplomatic immunity. I say, on the information I have, that he doesn’t.”
The sports minister walked up to the girl outside his hotel as she was on her way to Tate Modern with her mother and ten-year-old brother. He gave them some Egyptian flag pin badges and was seen on CCTV kissing the victim’s mother.
Naughton said the kiss was ‘friendly’ but that he then had pressed his index finger on the girl’s breast. She said: “Then he more or less does the same thing again, placing his left hand and arm around her right shoulder and again pressing her breast.
“She felt shocked, embarrassed, violated and upset.
“He told police he poked the girl’s breast to tell her where she should put the badge. He said he didn’t really understand what he had done wrong, but wanted to apologise because she was upset with him.”
Sam Corocan, the Khalil’s defender, said the father of three, who had ‘an absolutely exemplary record’, was ‘desperately sorry’.
Magistrate Sarah Graham ordered him to pay a total cost of £375 of which £100 went to the woman, accepting his apology as long as it was a ‘one-off error of judgement’.
This is not Pedo.. sorry, Paralympics’ first sex offence scandal. Two women and two young girls accused two Jordanian wheelchair-using powerlifters and their coach for sexual assaults that in some cases involved children during their pre-Games training in Northern Ireland, the Guardian writes.
Image of Hany Abdelhady, an Egyptian powerlifter and pure gentleman, via Getty.
