An Afghan migrant had been living in a UK town for just six weeks before he was accused of subjecting a 12-year-old girl to a string of sex attacks, a court has heard. Ahmad Mulakhil told Warwick Crown Court he had arrived in the country around four months before his arrest.

Mulakhil, addressing jurors through a Dari interpreter on Tuesday (February 3), said he did not force the girl to do anything, had not threatened her family and filmed part of what happened because she had insisted.

The 23-year-old of no fixed address admits oral rape, but denies two other counts of rape, two counts of sexual assault, child abduction and taking indecent images of a child. His co-defendant Mohammad Kabir, 24, denies intentional strangulation, committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual offence and attempting to take a child.

The trial was told Mulakhil engaged in sexual activity with the complainant on a grassy area on a housing estate in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, last July.

Mulakhil said he had been living in Nuneaton for around six weeks, having made an immigration application over “problems” he had in Afghanistan.

He said he noticed his friend, Kabir, talking to the 12-year-old at about 5.20pm on July 22. Adding that he had not seen Kabir strangle the girl at any point and had not done so himself either, Mulakhil told the jury he had believed her when she claimed to be 19.

He told the court: “She was insisting that she wants to come to my house. I couldn’t speak (English) well so I was trying to tell her that it is not possible.”

“She was following me around. When I got there (the grassy area) I sat down. For some few minutes we sat together and I was telling her you should go back to your home and your mother but she was not taking it.”

After using Google Translate to attempt to communicate with the girl, Mulakhil claimed she began touching his arms and sexual activity then took place lasting around five seconds.

Questioned about indecent images found during the police inquiry, Mulakhil said one had been taken with the phone in his hand “but her hand was also close”. He added: “She wanted to take a photo… videos. She was insisting a lot.”

Earlier, jurors were told Kabir, also of no fixed abode, urged police to check CCTV footage to try to clear his name.

During the closing evidence of the Crown’s case, prosecutor Daniel Oscroft read a translated transcript of a phone call Kabir made to an interpreter during police efforts to communicate with him.

The court heard Kabir told the interpreter: “The girl came, she went with my friend. I told her, ‘Don’t come to me, please go away, don’t come closer’.

“Tell them (the police) to check the camera. Tell them that my heart is exploding. I am brought in here innocently. I sent her away. I was telling her ‘don’t get closer to me you are small’. Tell them that I have not done anything wrong.”

The trial continues.