A 28-YEAR-OLD has gone on trial accused of perverting the course of justice by putting pressure on a man to retract a statement made to the States police following an incident in a town nightclub.
The alleged victim told a jury in the Royal Court yesterday that Elias Campbell Benyoucef tried to intimidate him after he claimed Mr Benyoucef threw a glass at his head in Rojo.
Mr Benyoucef denies perverting the course of justice and is not standing trial for assault.
Giving evidence on the first day of the trial, the alleged victim told the court that he was in Rojo in the early hours of 29 July 2023 when he said he was hit in the head by a glass. The glass is then said to have hit a woman nearby.
Answering questions from Crown Advocate Luke Sette, prosecuting, the alleged victim admitted he did not see Mr Benyoucef throw the glass but said he turned round to see him less than two metres away.
“He was laughing and he didn’t have any-thing in his own hand,” the man recalled.
The pair then met by chance in West’s Centre in the early hours of 5 August. CCTV footage was played to the jury in which, the prosecution alleged, showed Mr Benyoucef telling the man: “Come on then, we’re outside now.”
The man said Mr Benyoucef then approached him with a group of friends: “He tried to convince me to go to the police and change my statement. And he showed me three or four photographs he had taken of me coming back from work. He said: ‘Be careful, you are being watched.’
“I felt scared. I didn’t want to be assaulted on my way home.”
Advocate Mike Preston, defending, highlighted other CCTV footage from inside a gym – dating from after the alleged assault – in which Mr Benyoucef and the alleged victim seem to talk amicably before shaking hands and bumping fists.
The alleged victim admitted he had been “moderately drunk” at the time of the incident in Rojo, and Advocate Preston said to him: “You didn’t see him throw it. The glass didn’t smash. You made it up, didn’t you?”
The alleged victim said: “No.”
The advocate continued: “It was you who threw a glass, wasn’t it?”
The man replied: “No. I got hit by a glass.”
The trial is expected to last three more days. The Bailiff, Sir Timothy Le Cocq, is presiding.
