Serious Foreign Diplomat Jailed For Sexually Assaulting Intern! Guess His Nationality

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

SINGAPORE: A Saudi diplomat was found guilty on Wednesday (Feb 1) of molesting a 20-year-old student interning at a hotel he stayed at while on holiday in Singapore last year.

Beijing-based diplomat Bander Yahya A Alzahrani, 39, was convicted on three charges of sexual assault after an eight-day trial, during which he claimed the victim had conspired with other hotel staff to frame him and extort money from him.

District Judge Lee Poh Choo rejected Alzahrani’s defence, finding that the victim had no reason to falsely implicate him. On the contrary, the victim’s account had to be “dragged out” of her, as she worried the episode would be “interpreted negatively”, and that she would be seen as “unsuitable for the hotel industry”, the judge said.

The court heard that on Aug 14 last year, Alzahrani cornered the victim in the bathroom of his Sentosa hotel room, where he sexually assaulted her for about 15 minutes.

He restrained the victim by hugging her, before groping her, kissing her face and neck and rubbing himself against her. He also forced her to touch him.

Judge Lee said that the fact that the victim did not shout for help or attempt to escape should not diminish her case. “There is no template for how a victim should or must react. It was obvious to me that the victim was timid and new to the real and harsh world”, she said.

She also said the victim should not be faulted for minor discrepancies in her evidence as it was “most unfortunate" that the police officers assigned to interview the victim were male and the woman was too embarrassed to detail what Alzahrani had done to her.

The diplomat meanwhile, was “not a credible witness”, the judge said, pointing out that it was only towards the end of the trial that Alzahrani claimed the victim had fallen on him and that he had placed both hands on her back to support her.

Alzahrani is expected to be sentenced on Friday. For using criminal force on the victim, he could be jailed for up to three months and fined up to S$1,500. For aggravated molest, he faces between two to 10 years’ jail and caning.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...html?cid=fbcna


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