Sabawon Kharotai is accused of knifing Homed Heydari when fighting in Wavertree Botanic Gardens spilled out onto Edge Lane
Police at the scene on Edge Lane(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
A teenager accused of stabbing a man during a “scrap over a girl” has told a court that his “brain wasn’t working propertly” when he was questioned by police over the incident. Sabawon Kharotai is alleged to have knifed Homed Heydari when fighting in Wavertree Botanic Gardens spilled out onto Edge Lane, leading to “despicable acts of violence” near to the major road’s junction with Holt Road in Kensington.
The 18-year-old, of Grove Road in Fairfield, however, denies having stabbed his supposed victim in the thigh or being in possession of any weapon. He is currently on trial at Liverpool Crown Court accused of a string of violent offences.
Kharotai began giving evidence to a jury of five men and seven women this afternoon, Wednesday. Wearing a black and red t-shirt and assisted by a Pashto interpreter in the witness box, he stated during his evidence in chief that he had known Ghalib Habibi “for about three to four months” prior to the events on the evening of February 27 this year.
Of the man who he described as his “friend”, Kharotai said: “I received a phone call from him, and he told me ‘there’s a girl I like, and there’s a Kurdish guy who likes her as well. I’m saying she’s my girlfriend, and the Kurdish guy is saying she’s his girlfriend’.
“Habibi told me, ‘I need to go and speak to the person, to sit down and talk and explain the things’. I told him this was a good thing to do. He asked me to go with him, so that we could speak to them.”
When questioned by his counsel Eve Salter over why Habibi had asked him to attend, Kharotai replied “I don’t know” but denied having been aware of any pre-arranged fight or being present as “backup”. He also maintained that he did not arm himself with a knife in advance of the incident, adding: “He told me those people are coming at 9 o’clock to the park, and we just want to see them. He didn’t mention anything else.
“The only thing he told me at that time was, he said ‘the girl is my girlfriend, but the other guy is claiming she’s his girlfriend’. He told me he just wanted to go and sort this issue out with him.
“When I got there, the first thing I saw was six individuals. I said, ‘if you want to fight, I’m going to leave’. I said, ‘if you want to talk, then OK, I will stay’. They were wearing gloves and had masks on their faces. I was scared.”
Kharotai recalled that Habibi then began showing the other man pictures of the woman in question, after which the male “started attacking Ghalib”. He added: “Ghalib had a crutch and started hitting him back. He punched him in the face and then Ghalib, in retaliation, hit him in the head with a crutch, and then he started running away.”
Habibi was said to have been “walking perfectly fine” in spite of his possession of the crutch, with Kharotai continuing: “The male who attacked Ghalib, when he was hit by Ghalib with the crutch, he started running towards the road. I took [the crutch] off him in the park so I could stop him fighting and hitting that man any more. When he went across the road, I followed him to stop him attacking that person any more.”
Having followed him across Edge Lane, Kharotai said that he told Habibi “not to fight any more”. But he recalled: “He grabbed the crutch off me and told me ‘it’s none of your business’. I walked away and, all of a sudden, somebody grabbed me from behind and pushed me to the floor. I wanted to go home.”
After being taken to the floor, Kharotai said: “I landed on the floor. At one point, I was hit with a crutch and I got unconscious. [My hands] were on the floor. I tried to release myself so I could get away from them, putting my hands on the floor and pushing myself up so I could release myself. He hit me with a crutch, and I got unconscious after that.”
Kharotai denied having stabbed Heydari during this melee, adding that he “didn’t see anyone holding any knife”. He recalled that he then “regained consciousness in hospital”, where he was found to have suffered injuries including a fractured jaw, eye socket and cheekbone.
When subsequently interviewed by detectives on March 3, Kharotai said that he found it “very strange” that he was accused of stabbing Heydari as he “had nothing with him at that time”. Asked why he had said in a prepared statement at this stage that he had attempted to disarm the other man of a knife, he replied: “Because I didn’t know what was going on at that time.
“That’s why I mentioned it. I had an injury to my head, I had a broken jaw, I wasn’t in the right state of my mind. At that time, my brain wasn’t working properly. I couldn’t remember what happened at the time of the incident.”
‘Liverpool is full of girls, you can make another girlfriend’
Matthew Conway, prosecuting, then put to Kharotai during cross-examination that “lies come very easily to him”. However, he responded: “Why would I lie?”
When he was again questioned over why he had previously claimed to have disarmed the other man, he added: “I wasn’t in the right state, because I was wounded all of my face. My jaw was broken.
“Probably, I didn’t understand it properly because I didn’t know what was going on with me. What I’m trying to say is, maybe I mentioned it at that time but I didn’t understand it properly because I wasn’t in the right state.
“It’s not possible for me to fully recover in three days. I was wounded all over my body. My jaw was broken, head was broken, eye was broken as well. I wasn’t in the right state at that time.”
Mr Conway went on to ask him whether he was “going to keep pointing out that he was injured at any time we say something is a lie”, to which Kharotai responded: “No. Why would I lie?”
When accused of “attempting to trick the police into thinking he was the person who was trying to disarm a knifeman”, he stated: “No. Maybe I didn’t understand it properly at that time, that’s why. Maybe I mentioned it due to a lack of understanding. Whatever I said at that time, I can’t remember right now.
“Maybe I used this terminology while I didn’t understand it properly. Maybe I said it, but at that time I was seriously injured and I wasn’t aware about my situation at that time. I was extremely injured at that time. Maybe I said it, but I can’t remember.
“I might have said it, but I was extremely wounded at that time and I wasn’t in the right state. I’ve repeated it so many times. I might have said it, but I was extremely injured at that time and I wasn’t in the right state.
“Maybe I didn’t convey my message properly. Even today, I’m not in the right state of my mind. I can’t hear anything with my one ear. I’ve never started telling lies. I promised to tell the truth. Why would I lie to you?”
It was then put to Kharotai that he had claimed in his defence statement, a document lodged with the court in June of this year in order to outline his intended position at trial, that he had “pulled at the knife and it fell out of the attacking male’s hand, onto the floor”. He said of this: “Maybe I didn’t understand it, when I’ve said these things. Maybe the other interpreter who couldn’t communicate with me properly in Pashto, maybe he didn’t understand properly.”
Mr Conway went on to say: “Isn’t the real reason, Mr Kharotai, that what was in your prepared statement and what was in this defence statement are different from what you are telling this jury because you are a liar?”
Kharotai replied: “How come I’m a liar? On what basis? Maybe I’ve mentioned it, but I didn’t understand it properly.”
It was also said that Kharotai had claimed in his defence statement that Habibi was “walking with a limp” at the time of the altercation. He said of this: “The correct version, I’ve just mentioned here in the courtroom. Maybe I’ve lied about this. Maybe I didn’t understand when I mentioned it at that time. Maybe I just mentioned this by mistake.”
Asked of his friendship with Habibi, Kharotai stated that they would play volleyball together “maybe two, three times a week” and added: “Sometimes, I wouldn’t speak to him that frequently. Whenever he would go to play volleyball, he would ring me and I would go with him.”
Kharotai went on to say of being asked by Habibi to accompany him to the Botanic Gardens: “I had no thoughts about it. I just accompanied him to that place. Maybe he had no other friends, that’s why. He just wanted me to accompany him to speak to those people.
“He just only mentioned about the girl and the man, he didn’t mention about the six or seven other people. He just said he wanted me to go with him to speak to him. He said he’s going to come over to speak to his friend and we can speak to them.
“I didn’t know what was going on. He never mentioned that to me. He said ‘she’s my girlfriend and the other guy was claiming that she’s his girlfriend’. I told him, forget about this girl. Liverpool is full of girls, you can make another girlfriend. But he was determined.”
Mr Conway put to him that his response to Habibi was “don’t get hung up on this girl, there’s plenty more fish in the sea”. At this stage, Kharotai bypassed his interpreter and said in English “yeah, yeah, I told him not one time, 10 times” and, when asked whether he had “told him not to go”, responded: “Yeah, yeah. Of course”.
Fight was ‘planned on Snapchat’
Jurors were previously told by Mr Conway during the prosecution’s opening on Tuesday: “The case you are about to hear, in a sentence, is about a fight on Edge Lane on the 27th of February this year, when, the prosecution say, this man brought a knife to the scene and stabbed somebody in the thigh. That is the case in a nutshell.
“What you will see in the evidence is that this fight on that main arterial road in and out of Liverpool, which took place just outside of the Botanic Gardens, had been prearranged. The police managed to discover, from one of the phones of another person who turned up, that it had been planned on Snapchat.
“What is clear from the messages is that these two individuals, not including this defendant, organised a fight in the Botanic Gardens for 9 o’clock. The fight was over a girl. Neither of those two individuals came alone. One of them, Ghalib Habibi, brought along this man. The other, Fahad Al-Thafiri, brought along six others.
“We do not have any CCTV footage or eyewitnesses from inside the Botanic Gardens. The evidence in this case really is the moments after, because the CCTV captures people running down Edge Lane. The prosecution say that this is a continuation, overflow or overspill of what must have happened inside the Botanic Gardens.
“Essentially, what you have are two groups that came together on a cold February evening to have a fight, to have a scrap. On Edge Lane, the prosecution say, this man had a blade in his hand and put it into the thigh of somebody else.”
Jurors were shown pictures of the stab wound sustained by 31-year-old Heydari, a bloodstained knife which was recovered from the scene by police, later found to contain the injured man’s DNA, and images of Kharotai’s bloodied and swollen face in the aftermath of the incident. CCTV obtained from terraced houses on Edge Lane meanwhile showed Al-Thafiri running across the dual carriageway from the direction of Wavertree Botanic gardens and “stumbling” in front of a moving car, “almost getting run over” before trying the handle of another passing vehicle which then drove away.
Habibi, 19, was then seen following the 20-year-old across the road in order to “confront” him. Kharotai was thereafter seen handing a crutch to “his mate” before the two teenagers began walking away along Edge Lane, pursued by several other men.
The defendant was seen with “his left arm held out towards the men behind him” before he was tackled to the ground by Heydari. Mr Conway added: “In that clip, the prosecution say, there is an item in the hand of this defendant, consistent with him holding, in his fist, a bladed article.
“What you will see in the footage is, Homed Heydari tackled the defendant. There is then some tussling and some scrap on the ground. Ultimately, Mr Heydari ends up on top of this defendant, straddling him, and held him down until the police arrived.
“During the time that this defendant was being held to the ground, the prosecution say, subdued, restrained, other members of that group inflicted injury on the defendant. They kicked him in the head quite a bit. He suffered some injury because of that.
“It was the other group who called the police and restrained this man until they arrived. When they arrived, Fawad Habib handed to the police the bladed article that I have already shown you.
“Homed Heydari then realised that he had a 5cm puncture wound in his right thigh. There is nobody else who comes into contact with Homed Heydari and, save from the kicks that this man got to his head, he was only ever in contact with Homed Heydari, and Homed Heydari is the only one that ended up with that 5cm puncture wound to his upper thigh.”
When interviewed following his arrest, Kharotai stated in a prepared interview that he “had no knowledge that there would be a fight” prior to his attendance at the scene and denied being in possession of any weapon. He added that he had “attempted to disarm” the other man of a knife and was “repeatedly assaulted”, further denying that he had stabbed Heydari.
But Mr Conway, who described the scenes as “despicable acts of violence on Edge Lane that evening”, told the court: “This case is about the conclusions that you can draw from watching what this defendant did on that footage and what Mr Heydari did on that footage. The prosecution say that, once you have seen the footage, you will be sure that wound to his upper thigh was caused because this man stabbed him, and there is no other reasonable explanation for that 5cm wound to him.”
Kharotai denies wounding with intent, unlawful wounding, possession of a bladed article in a public place and affray. The trial, before Judge Denis Watson KC, continues.