Crown drops case against gang rape suspect
One of two gang rape suspects was acquitted mid-trial Friday when the Crown conceded it no longer had a sufficient case against him.
Prosecutor Rose Greenwood said following the cross-examination of the complainant by the man’s lawyer, she no longer had a reasonable likelihood of a conviction.
“The Crown is under the obligation to continually assess the reasonable likelihood of a conviction,” Greenwood told Justice Jim Eamon.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
“Following the cross-examination of (the complainant) the Crown no longer has a reasonable likelihood of a conviction.”
On Thursday, defence lawyer Rebecca Snukal grilled the 18-yearold on her evidence she was successively raped by three men in a southeast Calgary townhouse bathroom.
The woman identified one of the men as “Moe,” a man she later picked out of a photo lineup as being Abas Ibrahim.
But the witness conceded to Snukal she never saw Moe in the darkened bathroom when the second of her three attackers entered and raped her.
She also said he never spoke, leading to the possibility it was a fourth man in the residence, who spoke poor English.
Greenwood said the fact the witness didn’t hear the man speak meant the Crown couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt the attacker was Ibrahim.
She invited Eamon to acquit Ibrahim, 25, and continue the trial against Omar Kromah, 24.
A third suspect, whom the witness identified as Zakariya Abdow, was fatally stabbed on the Stampede grounds in July 2015, more than a year after the then-14-yearold said she was assaulted in May 2014.
While Eamon was reluctant to make a finding of not guilty without hearing all the evidence, Snukal told him there would be nothing further to implicate her client.
“There will be no further identification evidence that will be put forward against Abas Ibrahim,” she said.
Outside court, Snukal said she had no doubt the teen was brutalized on three occasions in the bathroom, but not by Ibrahim.
“There’s no question she was sexually assaulted three times that night, but there’s no evidence that my client participated, or that he was even there,” she said.