A judge tells the former Tory MP he has “no doubt” his original trial was fair and his conviction was safe.
The former MP Imran Ahmad Khan has lost an appeal against his conviction for sexual assault.
Khan, who was Conservative MP for Wakefield from 2019 until his resignation in April, was jailed for 18 months in May after he was found guilty of assaulting a 15-year-old boy at a house in 2008.
He had denied the allegation.
The 49-year-old challenged his conviction at the Court of Appeal last month.
The appeal was rejected on Monday, with judge Michael Sweeney saying he had “no doubt” that Khan’s trial was fair and his conviction was safe.
Khan’s lawyers had argued that the guilty verdict was “unsafe” because the case against him was “weak” and was bolstered by “bad character evidence” from a man who alleged he had been sexually assaulted as an adult by Khan in Pakistan in 2010.
They also argued his jail term was too long for the offence and should have been suspended.
Both appeals were dismissed by three senior judges.
During the original trial, the jury heard Khan forced the teenager to drink gin and tonic at a party before he dragged him upstairs, pushed him on to a bed and asked him to watch pornography before the attack.
The victim, now 29, told Southwark Crown Court that Khan touched his feet and legs and the former MP came within “a hair’s breadth” of his privates as he tried to sleep in a top bunk bed.
He ran to his parents and a police report was made at the time, but no further action was taken because he did not want to make a formal complaint.
He told the court “it all came flooding back” when Khan stood as a Conservative in the December 2019 general election.
He said he was not “taken very seriously” when he made the allegation to the Conservative Party press office days before Khan was elected as MP for Wakefield.
He made a complaint to the police days after Khan helped the party hold on to power by taking the seat from Labour with a majority of more than 3,000.
Passing sentence in May, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker said: “The only regret you feel is towards yourself for having found yourself in the predicament you face as a result of your actions some 14 years ago.”
Khan, the judge said, had displayed a “significant degree of brutality” in the lead-up to the assault, as he dragged his victim upstairs and threw him on to a bed at a house in Staffordshire in January 2008.
Source: Skynews.com