• United Kingdom: Alex Salmond arrested and charged with double attempted rape

Alex Salmond, the former prime minister of Scotland between 2007 and 2014, has been formally charged before an Edinburgh court with 14 sex crimes against ten women during the time he held the charge . The independence leader, who has pleaded not guilty while awaiting the trial on March 3, has two charges against him for attempted rape at Bute House, the official residence of the head of the Scottish Government.

The first one took place, according to the narration of the events carried out by the Police, in December 2013, when Salmond would have forced a woman whom he had previously kissed on the mouth without his consent to sit on his bed. Later, and in what the courts consider as an "intention" of rape, he would have initiated a series of unwanted touching on the sexual parts of the alleged victim to end up undressing her while struggling with her.

The second, already listed as an "attempted rape", took place in the same place on June 13, 2014, when, after obstructing the passage of a woman, he forced her against the wall, kissed her repeatedly on the face and in his neck and, after raising his legs to put them on top of his, he touched her breasts and the rest of his body. Then, after undressing her without her consent and according to the police version, she took off her clothes and tried to rape her.

This same woman says that in May of that same year and shortly before the leader of the Scottish Independence Party resigned from office because of the failure in the independence referendum, Salmond put his hand under his clothes to touch his chest , kissed him on his face and neck and stroked his leg. All this, like the nine of the ten charges of which he is accused, took place in the residence of the country's prime minister in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh.

"I am innocent and I intend to defend myself until the end, but the only place to do it, the only one suitable to face criminal accusations like these, is in the courts, something we will do next spring," said Salmond himself. "I am sure that you will understand that they do not allow me to say too much today, except that we have presented our defense statement in court. In it I declare myself innocent of all charges and explain some of the circumstances in which they occurred."

The Scottish Government, led by the SNP itself, opened an investigation in 2018 after the denunciation of two women about events that allegedly took place in 2013, a process to which more alleged victims have been added and that led the Police to initiate Your own research. Salmond, however, won in court a procedure for the way in which the internal investigation had been carried out, which earned him more than 730,000 euros of public money to pay for his defense.

Unwanted Touches

The 14 charges of sexual assault that weigh against the former independence leader are, essentially, unwanted touching and kissing by the plaintiffs. From a woman who stroked her legs during a car ride in February 2011, to another who took her shoe off, she put her foot close to her mouth and tried to kiss it in October 2013. A large part of them In addition, he agrees that Salmond touched their asses , breasts and tried to kiss them , in addition to giving sexual comments about their bodies.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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