A man who smiled and stuck his tongue out to his friend while he was allegedly raping a woman on Brighton beach has denied "celebrating her humiliation".

Asylum seeker Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, is on trial alongside co-defendants Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, and Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, for allegedly targeting the woman in a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack in the early hours of October 4 last year.

Alshafe and Ahmadi are accused of repeatedly raping the woman on the East Sussex beach, while Al-Danasurt filmed the incident.

Alshafe gave evidence at Hove Crown Court on Wednesday, April 8 and said he believed the woman wanted to have sex with him, adding: “I swear I didn’t rape her.”

The Egyptian national previously told the court the woman had approached himself and Ahmadi, kissing them and touching them so they thought she wanted to have sex.

Jurors at Hove Crown Court were shown a video in which Alshafe is seen smiling with his tongue out and making a hand gesture towards his friend filming.

He claimed he did not know he was being filmed and was making a hand gesture in return to his friend who made one towards him first.

Put to him in cross-examination by prosecutor Hanna Llewellyn-Waters KC that he was celebrating her humiliation, he replied: “This is not celebration, this a reaction to a gesture that was made to me.”

Speaking through an Arabic interpreter, he also told jurors: “I was happy, she was happy.”

Alshafe was also asked about another recording that the court was shown, where he slapped the woman in the face.

He said: “I wasn’t hitting her to punish her or torture her, I was playing with her.”

The court heard that the woman had been separated from her friends while on a girls’ night out, with prosecutors saying the defendants approached her when she was “staggering in the street” alone.

The court was told that footage shows the woman falling to the floor twice.

Alshafe answered that the woman was not unconscious or asleep at any time, "she was enjoying what we were doing.”

He added that both before and after the incident in the walk to the beach the pair were kissing.

At the time of the alleged offences, all three defendants knew each other and were residents at a Home Office-approved hotel accommodation for asylum seekers near Horsham, West Sussex, jurors have heard.

Alshafe admitted he lied in his initial police interviews about not being in Brighton and in his accommodation at the time of the incident.

He told the court on Wednesday: “I was scared, I was terrified of what’s going on.”

Alshafe, of Lower Beeding, and Iranian national Ahmadi, of Crewe in Cheshire, have each denied two counts of raping the woman.

Egyptian national Al-Danasurt, also of Lower Beeding, is jointly charged on all four rape counts as a secondary party “encouraging the rape by his actions at the scene, including filming it”, and has pleaded not guilty to all four charges.

He denies a fifth count of “sharing intimate films” without the complainant’s consent.

The charge relates to an allegation that Al-Danasurt sent recordings of the alleged rapes to Ahmadi’s phone via Snapchat shortly after the incident.

The trial continues.