Alex Salmond trial: Alleged attempted rape victim ‘not there at all’ Lawyers for the former SNP leader argued that the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, did not attend the celebrity dinner

The former Scottish Government official who alleges Alex Salmond tried to rape her at his official residence while he was First Minister was not there on the night she says it happened, a court has heard.

Lawyers for the former SNP leader argued that the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, did not attend the celebrity dinner at Bute House on the night of the alleged incident.

The jury at the High Court in Edinburgh has previously heard how she felt she was being “hunted” by Mr Salmond, 65, as he chased her from room to room after the other guests left.

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She claimed that after forcibly removing most of her clothes, the former First Minister had removed his own, pinned her to a bed and attempted to rape her before she struggled free.

Cross-examination

But during her cross-examination on Tuesday, Mr Salmond’s defence team suggested she had not been at Bute House that night and had also invented a separate sexual assault allegation.

They also drew on official diaries and other records suggesting he had only stayed at the residence on a few occasions during the month the alleged sexual assault in 2014 is alleged to have occurred.

Defence QC Shelagh McCall also suggested that the woman had embellished her account of the evening of the alleged attempted rape by consulting a book about Scottish independence.

“Is the truth of the matter you were not at the dinner at all and there was no incident with the First Minister?” she asked the complainant, who can only be referred to as Woman H.

“I wish for my life that that was true, but that’s not true,” she replied. “I wish for my life that the First Minister had been nicer and a better man, and I wasn’t here [giving evidence].”

Ms McCall pointed out that the woman had not mentioned the fact that the dinner on the night in question was attended by a celebrity until her second police interview.

She suggested that she had obtained this information from a published account of the Scottish independence campaign, a claim the woman denied.

‘Scared of this man’

Asked why she had not tried to summon a security guard, she replied: “I really wish I had. I was scared. I was embarrassed and humiliated. A lot of us were scared of this man.”

She added: “Looking back, I wish I had screamed, I wish I had physically reacted, but I turned to stone. All I wanted was to get away and for it to stop.”

It also emerged that in 2015, less than a year after the alleged attempted rape, the woman had sounded out one of Mr Salmond’s friends about an employment opportunity.

Part of the text message shown to the jury read: “Would be great to be working with him again.”

Mr Salmond denies 14 alleged offences against 10 women, including one attempted rape, 11 sexual assaults and two indecent assaults.

The trial in front of Lady Dorrian continues on Wednesday and is expected to last for four weeks.