Mustafa Ururyar, whose conviction of sexually assaulting a fellow PhD student was overturned, signed a peace bond and professed his innocence as charges he lived with for almost three years were withdrawn in court Wednesday.

In July 2016, Ururyar was convicted of sexually assaulting Mandi Gray in his apartment on Jan. 31, 2015. The controversial 179-page decision that quoted from academic studies and literature about sexual assault was overturned on appeal this past summer.

“The original conviction of Mr. Ururyar was based on errors of fact and law made by the trial judge; eventually corrected on appeal,” his lawyer, Daniel Brown, told the court on Wednesday. “This ordeal has lasted nearly three years and stripped Mr. Ururyar of his liberty, privacy and dignity.”

The charges were withdrawn Wednesday in a downtown Toronto courtroom. There will be no retrial. Ururyar signed a peace bond that did not include an admission of guilt, but bars him from contacting Gray for a year.

A peace bond is a protection order made by a court. A defendant may face criminal charges if they do not obey the conditions of the peace bond.

Brown said that his client welcomes the peace bond resolution and that Ururyar has no desire to have future contact with Gray.

“Let there be no doubt. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Ururyar is innocent of these horrible accusations,” Brown told Justice Melvin Green. “An accusation is just that – an accusation. This case stands for the fact that we must never lose sight of the fundamental right to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise.”

Both graduate students at York University, Ururyar and Gray had been in a casual relationship before the alleged assault in 2015. After a night of drinking, the two went to Ururyar’s apartment, where Gray alleges she was raped. Ururyar testified the sex was consensual and that Gray had been sexually aggressive throughout the night.

The now-retired trial judge, Marvin Zuker, sentenced Ururyar to 18 months in jail and took the unprecedented step of ordering him to pay $8,000 in legal costs.

This past summer, Superior Court Justice Michael Dambrot overturned the verdict on appeal, calling it incomprehensible and illogical and lacking proper reasons for the conviction.

The case was sent back to Ontario court and left up to the Crown to decide whether to prosecute the case a second time. Crown attorney Jennifer Lofft told the court on Wednesday that a second trial would not be in the interest of the administration of justice.

Gray said on Tuesday that prosecutors told her a day before that Ururyar would sign a peace bond. Gray said that she did not want to go through a second trial because of the emotional and financial stress she experienced after the first.

“I have wanted this since I found out about the appeal of the conviction because the legal system has demonstrated itself to be so grossly incompetent and has no regard for my life,” Gray said Tuesday. “It has been brutalizing experience.”

Brown told the court on Wednesday morning that the allegations against Ururyar were proved to be hollow but that there will still be people who “stubbornly cling” to the belief that his client did something wrong.

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“Once charged, never entirely exonerated,” he told the court. “Ururyar sincerely hopes that the gross unfairness of what took place here in no way tarnishes the justice system’s quest to root out sexual assault and harassment and to bring genuine offenders to justice.”

With files from Betsy Powell