A 35-year-old BMW worker accused of trying to rape a teenage boy in his town centre bedsit after plying him with drink claimed he did nothing wrong.

Soran Mohammed told a jury that he had been innocently giving the 17-year-old a massage when the boy became agitated and stormed out of his flat.

The fuming lad, who returned minutes later with a knife and threatened to kill him, claimed he fell asleep watching a film and woke to find his host trying to rape him.

Mohammed came to the UK as a refugee from the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq in 2000, he told Swindon crown court. He moved to the town at the start of 2004, where he quickly found work as a welder at BMW.

He said that he had bumped into the teenage boy a handful of times and passed him in the town centre on Monday, July 26 last year and invited him back to his flat.

Giving evidence from the witness box Mohammed said that his visitor was tired as he had been playing football so he offered to give him a massage. He told the jury of four men and eight women that in his culture it was common for people to massage each other and he had been taught how to do it by his mother.

Under cross examination from Ray Tully, prosecuting, he denied that he had targeted the lad because he thought he may be gay or that he had tried to rape the boy.

The case continues