{"id":65315,"date":"2025-08-14T01:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/65315\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T01:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:39:07","slug":"man-staying-at-hotel-that-has-been-focus-of-protests-denies-sexual-assault-charge-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/65315\/","title":{"rendered":"Man staying at hotel that has been focus of protests denies sexual assault charge | UK News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man staying at a hotel that has been the focus of a series of protests has denied a charge of sexual assault and faces a trial next month.<\/p>\n<p>Mohammed Sharwarq, a 32-year-old Syrian national, was arrested after police were called to the Bell Hotel on the Epping High Road in Essex yesterday, police said.<\/p>\n<p>Sharwarq, who is alleged to have kissed a man on the neck, indicated a plea of not guilty to a charge of sexual assault at Chelmsford Magistrates&#8217; Court today.<\/p>\n<p>He indicated guilty pleas to six further charges concerning four complainants &#8211; with two counts of common assault and four of assault by beating.<\/p>\n<p>Sharwarq is alleged to have punched a man in the face, thrown an object at a man, slapped a third man in the face and attempted to punch a fourth.<\/p>\n<p>Sky News understands the alleged offences took place inside the hotel between 25 July and 12 August.<\/p>\n<p>Read more from Sky News:<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/three-teenagers-charged-with-murder-after-death-of-man-49-in-kent-13410889\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Three teens in court over man&#8217;s murder<\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/trumps-pride-vs-putins-legacy-what-to-expect-from-pivotal-summit-13411124\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">What to expect from Trump-Putin summit<\/a><\/p>\n<p>District judge Lynette Woodrow remanded Sharwarq, who was assisted in court by an Arabic interpreter, in custody until his trial on 30 September.<\/p>\n<p>The arrest followed weeks of protests outside the hotel.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Hudson, the Conservative MP for Epping Forest, said last month that the protests were a crisis that &#8220;risks boiling over&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man staying at a hotel that has been the focus of a series of protests has denied&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-65315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}