A$AP Rocky guilty of assault in Sweden
STOCKHOLM — It looked like a small-time assault case, but, somehow, it swept up Kim Kardashian West, President Donald Trump and the United States’ top hostage negotiator. And Wednesday it finally reached its conclusion when judges in Stockholm found rapper A$AP Rocky guilty of assault.
But he will not serve any more jail time, having already spent over a month in a Swedish detention center.
Swedish prosecutors had sought a six-month prison sentence for Rocky for his part in a street brawl in Stockholm on June 30 that left a 19-year-old man bleeding and needing medical treatment.
But a panel of four judges, led by Senior Judge Per Lennerbrant, found that the assault was not of such a “serious nature that a prison sentence must be chosen.”
Rocky, 30, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, said this month during the trial that he had acted in self-defense when he threw the man, Mustafa Jafari, to the ground, and then, along with two members of his entourage, punched and kicked him.
Jafari had repeatedly harassed the rapper’s entourage and had thrown a punch at his bodyguard just before the attack, Rocky said.
The judges found his defense unconvincing.
“Based on two witness statements, the court finds the defendants were not subject to imminent attack,” the judgment said. “Therefore, the defendants were not entitled to use violence in self-defense.”
Rocky’s co-defendants, Bladimir Emilio Corniel and David Tyrone Rispers, received the same verdict and sentence. All three also were ordered to pay Jafari damages. In the trial, Jafari’s lawyer asked for about $16,000 in compensation, but the court awarded 12,500 Swedish kronor, about $1,300, for pain, insult and injuries.
Though the sentence represented a victory of sorts for Rocky, Slobodan Jovicic, his lawyer, said that he was disappointed by the conviction.
Jovicic said he did not know whether the rapper would appeal the verdict.
“The question is whether he’ll have the energy and stamina to do this one more time given all the circus around it,” he said.
Much of the discussion in the trial centered on whether a bottle was used in the assault. Jafari said he had been hit on the side of the head with one but was unable to say by whom. Rocky admitted picking up a bottle shortly before the fight but said he put it back down shortly afterward because he “realized it was stupid.”
“The prosecutor has not been able to prove that the victim was struck in the back of the head with a bottle or that he was in any other way assaulted with bottles,” Lennerbrant said in a news release. “This has affected the assessment of the seriousness of the crime.”
Rocky and his two codefendants served almost a month in detention in Sweden after they were arrested. Seen as flight risks, they were kept in the detention center from July 5 until the trial ended Aug. 2.
Trump became a close watcher of the case after rap superstar Kanye West asked his wife, Kardashian West, to seek White House help in winning Rocky’s release from jail.
The president ramped up the pressure on Sweden, a longtime ally, beginning with a cordial phone call to the prime minister, then critical messages on Twitter, and, finally, by dispatching a special envoy for hostage affairs, Robert O’Brien, to watch over the trial.