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US RAPPER A$AP Rocky pleaded not guilty to assault at his trial in Sweden today over a street brawl, saying he acted in self-defence in a case that has stirred diplomatic tensions and outraged fans.
The 30-year-old rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was arrested on 3 July along with three other people following a fight in Stockholm on 30 June. One of them, the rapper’s bodyguard, was later released.
At the start of the trial this morning prosecutor Daniel Suneson told the court he believed Mayers, and the two other accused, had assaulted the plaintiff, a 19-year old man, together.
Suneson said the accused had punched, kicked, and hit the plaintiff with a bottle. He then went on to show the court sections of the 550-page preliminary investigation report.
The evidence highlighted included surveillance footage and maps to establish a timeline of the events leading up to the brawl.
Video evidence
The prosecution then went on to show a number of videos, including ones published by US celebrity news outlet TMZ, where the rapper can be seen throwing a young man to the ground and then aiming several punches at him while he is down.
The court was also shown videos published to the rapper’s Instagram account, in which the young man can be seen arguing with the musician over a pair of headphones.
The artist appears to repeatedly ask the man and his friend to stop following him and his entourage. One of the young men can also be seen hitting the artist’s bodyguard.
However, the prosecution also showed videos retrieved from the phones of members of the artist’s entourage, as well as 13 minutes of security footage from a fast food restaurant.
Suneson told the court the videos showed the lead up to the fight and also proved that the videos posted to the artist’s Instagram had been edited to remove instances where the bodyguard grabbed and pushed the plaintiff prior to the fight.
The prosecutor also showed text conversations between members of the artist’s crew, stating that the video uploaded to Instagram had been “cleaned up a bit”.
A$AP Rocky was dressed in a green t-shirt and sweatpants, and sat in the courtroom with his lawyer Slobodan Jovicic.
The lawyer told the court his client acted in self-defence.
“He admits that he threw the plaintiff on the ground, that he stepped on his arm and punched or pushed his shoulder,” Mayers’ lawyer Slobodan Jovicic told the court, but added that it was a case of “self-defence”.
The rapper’s mother Renee Black was seated in the front row of the visitors’ bench, and waved at her son as he left the court when it took a recess for lunch.
Robert C O’Brien, US Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, has also travelled to Sweden to attend the trial.
US President Donald Trump has called for the rapper to be freed, drawing complaints of interference from Swedish politicians.
“The president asked me to come here and support these American citizens and we’re working to bring them back as soon as possible,” O’Brien told AFP, declining to comment on what he thought of the prosecution’s case.
#FreeRocky
On 5 July, the Stockholm District Court ordered that Mayers be kept in custody while the case was being investigated. He has remained in a Swedish remand prison awaiting trial.
The musician, who had his breakthrough in 2011 with the release of the mixtape Live. Love. A$AP, was on a European tour when the incident occurred and has had to cancel over a dozen shows following his arrest.
Throughout his detention, fans, fellow artists and US Congress members have campaigned for his release.
An online petition called #JusticeForRocky has garnered more than 630,000 signatures. Social media campaigns have urged fans to boycott Swedish brands such as IKEA.
Trump has repeatedly tried to intervene. He personally called Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven to discuss the matter.
In a subsequent tweet, Trump said he vouched for the rapper and offered to pay his bail, even though Sweden’s justice system has no provisions for bail.
The district court deemed Mayer to be a flight risk and ordered his continued detention.
Lofven’s press secretary Toni Eriksson told AFP: “The prime minister was careful to point out that the Swedish justice system is completely independent.”
Upon learning that the case would go to trial, Trump vented his frustration on Twitter.
“Very disappointed in Prime Minister Stefan Lofven for being unable to act,” Trump tweeted, adding: “Give A$AP Rocky his FREEDOM.”
Several Swedish politicians fired back at Trump for trying to interfere in the judicial process.
“Political interference in the process is distinctly off limits! Clear?,” former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt tweeted.
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A day will come when we regard the days of social media dominance in the same way we view smoking in the office and drink driving today. We will look back and think what the f were we at? They are a c4ncer.
@David Clements: So true and sadly a lot of people can’t see the correlation between rising mental health issues and the internet/social media in general. It should really come with a health warning.
All the “moderators” of Facebook are useless anyway. I’ve reported quite a few disturbing things that apparently isn’t against their “standards” (not that they have any), yet someone’s unpopular opinion gets silenced, and you land in Führer Zuckerberg’s jail.
@Dan Skelton: Literally just what i said! its absolutely crazy. You can get banned for basically standing up for yourself. Se x ually explicit bullying is allowed, being called this and that and being told you need a good s** g (i was told this, by a woman, no less) and when i reported her, they said she posted nothing offensive.
@Dan Skelton: I reported a comment just this week where someone said that “Gay people were just the same as Peados” . It didn’t go against their guidelines. I was given the option to have the decision reviewed so I clicked that. They responded that they haven’t time to review it and their decision stands.
@Pauline Gallagher: I called out a homophobe on a sick rant about gay people by asking him if he was gay himself such was his fervent anti gay diatribe and I got a 7 day ban for bullying. You couldn’t make it up. (This comment is getting a 7.2 on the journals toxicometer.)
Maybe then they should spend less time targeting the wrong people for banning from Facebook? I got banned for using a so- called trigger word; i called this much more abusive man ‘a pile’, that was it, thats all i used, and i was banned for 30 days under their draconian bullying harassment laws. The guy in question was accusing me of being homophob ic and all sorts of things just because i raised concerns on an article about unisex bathrooms in a school. You cant say anything these days.
@Pauline Gallagher: On the contrary. You can say pretty much anything you want these days,with any number of platforms to facilitate your soapbox. you’re just not free from consequence of what you say.
@OnlyHereForTheComments: Consequences? I didnt do anything wrong. Youre missing the entire point of what i said.
I deactivated my twitter account recently…. Feels good…
End the internet! It’s just one big platform for advertising! It’s also making society a more closed place.
@Will: “End the internet!”
Steady on! The internet is the greatest thing humanity has invented since the wheel.
Just stay away from unsocial media and you’ll be right.
Farcebook is an absolute joke, the moderation is awful, a friend asked me where I was after posting a photo,I responded “I’d have to kill you if I told you that” followed by a big smile, I got blocked from commenting for 3 days, sad lot, obviously no understand of Irish wit.
Brave lady for doing what she did. That took guts.
@Adele Ryan: steady on, next she’ll tell everyone she’s a man and they’ll put her on the cover of Time Magazine
@Adele Ryan: She literally went through a full recruitment process to get that job. She knew full well what she was signing up for. Why is she moaning about it now. If she doesn’t like the job that she applied for then she should go and look for a job that suits her temperament !
logged off Facebook just over a year ago, best thing I’ve done in a long time, my mental health has improved.
I use twitter but I use an anonymous account.
I got banned from Facebook for saying that Israel was stealing Palestinians houses in Jerusalem and had killed children. Those content moderator are on hair triggers.
have your say