A former Halifax taxi driver accused of sexually assaulting a female passenger Jan. 6, 2019, says a limited grasp of the English language prevented him from understanding his rights when he was arrested and interviewed by police later that day.

Tesfom Kidane Mengis, 37, is on trial in Halifax provincial court on allegations that he forcibly kissed the intoxicated young woman and hiked her skirt up before she got out of the cab and ran into her apartment.

The trial sat for three days in January and resumed Friday in Halifax provincial court in front of Judge Gregory Lenehan.

An interpreter is translating the proceedings into Tigrinya, Mengis’ first language, which is spoken in eastern African countries such as Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Mengis took the stand Friday during a voir dire, or trial within a trial, on a defence motion to have his police interview ruled inadmissible as evidence at the main trial because he did not understand his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

A video of the interview was played in court at the start of the voir dire in January.

During the interview, Mengis said he hugged and kissed the woman after she told him he was “a nice guy” for allowing her not to pay for her cab ride.

Mengis told the interviewing officer, Const. Jasmin Razic, that he didn’t know the woman didn’t want to be hugged and kissed.

“If she was mad, she would have said something to me, you know what I mean?” Mengis said. "I would apologize, if she was mad.”

On Friday, Mengis testified that although he learned some English in school back home, he only began speaking it after coming to Canada in 2015.

“My level of understanding English is very limited,” he said through the interpreter.

Mengis described his English vocabulary as “poor” and said he has problems understanding the language if people are speaking too fast.

“Sometimes from a whole sentence, I might understand one word,” he said.

“There are many English words that I can’t find an equivalent for in Tigrinya.”

He said that at the time of his arrest, he “didn’t really understand” why he was being taken to the police station for an interview. He said he had never heard the term sexual assault used before that day.

“Did you request an interpreter at any point?” defence lawyer Laura McCarthy asked.

“I did not ask,” Mengis replied. “I did not know I had the right to ask.”

He said police let him speak to a lawyer on the phone but he couldn’t understand what the man was saying.

When he was taken into the interview room, he said he recalls the officer reading something to him, “but I never understood the contents.”

“I didn’t really know my rights at that time,” he said.

Asked why he responded affirmatively after his rights were read to him, he said: “All I was trying to (do) was allow him to do his job, but I didn’t understand what he was really saying.”

At the request of the officer, Mengis wrote a letter of apology to the complainant before he went home.

“In our country, when you write a letter of apology, the ultimate aim is to make peace … and try to apologize and move on,” Mengis explained Friday.

“My understanding of writing the apology letter … is the letter would be given to the (complainant) … and the case is going to be over.”

Earlier Friday, Razic agreed with McCarthy that there was “broken English” at times when Mengis was speaking but insisted there was no gap in communication between them.

“It’s not my common practice to continue an interview with somebody that I’m not able to understand,” Razic said.

“And if that becomes an issue, then I stop that right there and look at other options. There was no need for me to do that in this case.”

On redirect, Crown attorney Rick Woodburn asked the officer what he has observed at the courthouse about Mengis’ ability to speak or understand the English language.

Razic said that after the trial adjourned Jan. 23, he saw Mengis and his wife standing in the hallway with the two defence lawyers at the time without an interpreter present.

“I was seated in the hallway for approximately five minutes and observed them having a conversation in English,” he said. “All four were speaking and answering (questions) back and forth.”

UPDATE: The trial was set to continue Monday (March 16) with further voir dire evidence from Mengis but it was adjourned because Lenehan wasn't available. He will set a new date for continuance of the trial on April 21.