A student walked free from court yesterday after being found not guilty of raping a teenager.

Victor Zoi, 19, denied forcing the 13-year-old girl to have sex with him in the kitchen of a friend's flat in Botley after a night out in Oxford city centre last August.

Mr Zoi, who came to Oxford from the beleaguered region of Chechenia in the former Soviet Union in 1996, said he had been staying with his girlfriend at their home in Marshall Road, Cowley, Oxford, on the night in question.

Mr Zoi said he did not know any Russians who lived in Botley and had only heard of that part of Oxford after he had been arrested.

He said the girl, who cannot be named, was simply mistaken when she identified him as the man who attacked her. David Hughes, defending, said: "It is quite clear that this girl was raped and subjected to an horrendous ordeal. This case is not about that.

"In this case the question of identification is absolutely crucial and there is not one scrap of forensic evidence that connects Victor Zoi to the girl or to the flat."

Story date: Wednesday 10 March

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