Mustapha Ouanes, a member of a Saudi prince’s traveling entourage, convicted of rape
Mustapha Ouanes, a friend of the Saudi royal family, was convicted of raping a woman at the Plaza Hotel in New York in 2010 on Wednesday.
Mustapha Ouanes, an Algerian-born engineer and a member of the Saudi royal family's entourage, has been convicted of rape in New York, the Atlantic Wire reported.
Ouanes was charged for bringing two women back to his hotel room after a night of drinking in January 2010 and raping one of them after they fell asleep, according to the Atlantic.
"This was a crime of opportunity — the defendant had a vulnerable, intoxicated woman in his hotel room and sexually assaulted her," Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said, the New York Post reported.
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The married, 60-year-old Ouanes invited both women to his Plaza Hotel room, where he raped one of the women while she was incapacitated by alcohol and hashish. When the woman awoke to find Ouanes on top of her, she broke a glass and tried to use it as a weapon, the Post reported.
Samuel David, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, said police found the two women huddled in the bathroom of Ouanes' hotel room, “so frantic, so devastated” that they could barely explain what had happened, the New York Times reported.
Ouanes argued that the 2010 encounter was consensual and that the woman and her friend concocted the allegations because he wouldn't pay for sex, the Associated Press reported.
“Their story is driven by anger and greed at Mustapha Ouanes for something he did not do,” Ouanes' lawyer, Frederica L. Miller, told jurors in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the Times reported.
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Ouanes, a Canadian citizen, works for a firm that contracts with the Saudi royal family, and spent about half his time working and traveling with a Saudi prince, the Atlantic reported.
He has been convicted on four felony counts, including a charge of first-degree rape, two counts of criminal sexual acts in the first degree, and one count of sexual abuse in the first degree, by the Manhattan District Attorney's office. He faces between five and 25 years in prison for the crime.