The US rapper A$AP Rocky, who faces charges of assault causing actual bodily harm, has told a court on the second day of his trial in Stockholm that he felt “shocked and scared” by a street brawl and “was just trying to escape a crazy situation”.
“I’ve heard I can claim damages, but I don’t want any money,” the 30-year-old platinum-selling artist, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, told the court. “That’s not what I want. What I want is justice. And I want my name cleared.”
Prosecutors allege Mayers and two members of his entourage “deliberately, together and in agreement” attacked the alleged victim, Mustafa Jafari, outside a hamburger restaurant in the centre of the Swedish capital on 30 June.
The three men, who have pleaded not guilty to assault and say they were responding to harassment and provocations, have been in detention since 3 July in connection with the incident and face up to two years in prison.
The case has strained Swedish-US relations after celebrities including Kim Kardashian West, Justin Bieber, Post Malone and Shawn Mendes backed a #JusticeForRocky campaign and Donald Trump publicly demanded Mayers’ release.
“The situation was not under control,” the rapper, dressed in prison uniform of green T-shirt and trousers, told the court. He said his bodyguard “tried to scare the guy but nothing worked. He seemed without fear; I thought he was on drugs. It was scary.”
Mayers said he had been attacked several times - including being stabbed in the face - in recent years. “We’re in a foreign country, we’re approached by two strangers with aggressive behaviour … I don’t know what to expect when being attacked by strangers, that’s why I have security,” he said. “At that moment I wasn’t thinking.”
Mayers, whose biggest hit is Fuckin’ Problems and whose first two albums went to No 1 in the US, added: “We wanted to defuse the situation and get away from these guys.” He said Jafari and a friend had attacked his bodyguard. “I intervened. I threw him to the ground, stepped on his arm, kicked him. I punched or shoved him,” he said.
On the first day of the trial on Tuesday, the public prosecutor, Daniel Suneson, showed the court phone and CCTV footage which he said showed that after an earlier altercation over a pair of headphones, Mayers’ bodyguard grabbed Jafari and lifted him up by the throat.
The rapper later threw Jafari, 19, to the ground, the prosecutor said, and he and two of his entourage kicked and punched him and struck him with a bottle. Jafari is claiming SEK 139,700 (£12,050) in damages for the alleged attack, which left him needing hospital treatment for cuts to his arms, legs and head and a fractured rib.
Much of the trial has centred on the video evidence, some of which appeared on the celebrity news site TMZ and, in edited form, on Mayers’ Instagram page, and the question of whether a bottle had been used as a weapon.
Mayers said his team uploaded the edited clips because TMZ had published a video “claiming I had beaten someone”. This was “a counter video” designed to “show our version of the story”, he said, according to Swedish reporters in the courtroom.
Jafari told the court on Thursday he had been kicked and punched and hit on the head with a bottle; Mayers said he had picked up a bottle to prevent Jafari and his friend from doing so, but put it down “long before” he threw the 19-year-old to the ground.
The case turned into a minor diplomatic incident after Kardashian West appealed directly to Trump, prompting the president to tweet that he would “call the very talented prime minister of Sweden to see what we can do about helping A$AP Rocky”.
The two men spoke by phone, with Trump offering to “personally vouch for [Mayers’] bail, or an alternative”. the Swedish leader, Stefan Löfven, issued a statement saying that in Sweden the judicial system, prosecutors and courts were independent.
Trump subsequently tweeted that he was “very disappointed” in Löfven, adding: “Give A$AP Rocky his FREEDOM. We do so much for Sweden but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. Sweden should focus on its real crime problem!”
The trial is scheduled to end on Friday. The court will then announce a date for the verdict and say whether Mayers must remain in custody until that time.
