A YOUNG Japanese tourist has told a court that a strange man subjected her to a terrifying ordeal during a visit to Scotland.

Giving evidence via a video link from the Japanese Ministry of Justice in Tokyo, the 24-year-old woman claimed her attacker burst into her Airbnb flat in Musselburgh and tried to strangle her.

He then pushed her to the floor, where he pulled down her jeans and groped her as she frantically tried to fight him off, a court heard on Thursday.

The tourist said she had been on a tour of Edinburgh on the second day of a three-day visit to Scotland on the day of the alleged attack.

She said she got the bus home to the rented flat on Musselburgh's Millhill Wynd and had just entered the building when someone knocked on the outer door.

Speaking through an interpreter, she told a jury: “I thought it might be one of the residents so I opened it. It was a man but I didn’t know him.

"I didn’t have any conversation [with him] but I went back to my flat.”

Shortly afterwards, she told the High Court at Livingston that she heard someone knocking on the internal door but she couldn’t see anyone through the peephole so just ignored it.

She went on: “Someone knocked again so I looked out the peephole again. I couldn’t see anything so I just opened it and I saw the man I had seen at the entrance door.

“Before the man came into my flat, he said: ‘Are you OK?’ I didn’t answer. He just pushed to open the door.

"I was very frightened. I tried to push back but he came into my room.

“I remember he just strangled my neck. He pushed me against the wall and I tried to just leave him, but he tried coming towards me and I tried to struggle against that. I forced him to let me go.

“My memory is very vague but he asked me to hand the key to him and also he tried to push me many times.”

She said she ended up on her back on the floor of an untidy room, with the stranger undoing her jeans and trying to pull them off.

She said: “I tried not to [let him] take them off. I struggled with that.”

Asked if he had managed to pull her jeans down, she replied: “Yes he did. I fight back to him so maybe not that far. We are fighting each other.

“He asked me to have sexual intercourse, more than once. I think I just kept saying no.”

She said she had a memory that the man had touched her but she did not want to reveal what part of her body he had touched.

Advocate depute Margaret Barron said: “Can I ask if he touched you once or more than once?” She replied: “More than once.”

The advocate depute asked: “Did he touch you over your clothing or under your clothing?”

She said: “It depends on the part of my body, but both."

Ms Barron asked her: “What part of your body did he touch?”

She responded: “I don’t want to answer. When I just remember, think about those days, it’s very hard.”

Summing up her hour-long ordeal, she said: “First of all, when an unknown man came into my flat I was very, very frightened.

“I felt so unpleasant. I was very scared. I was very scared.”

The woman asked for a break and the court was adjourned. When the CCTV link was reactivated, a Japanese official explained: “It is very difficult for witness to speak in front of gentlemen.”

The witness said that when the man left after an hour, she texted the owner of the Airbnb on Millhill Wynd to tell him what had happened and he contacted the police

Officers took the clothes she had been wearing, along with a DNA swab, and later photographed bruises to her finger and neck.

She gave police a description of her attacker which included mention of a tattoo that he had.

The jury earlier viewed CCTV footage which showed the suspected attacker standing beside a bus stop on the route of the No 124 bus which the tourist used to travel from Edinburgh city centre to Musselburgh High Street.

Kevin Turner, 29, who is from Leith, Edinburgh, but has a current address in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, pleads not guilty to a total of six charges, including assaulting the Japanese woman with intent to rape her on February 9, 2019.

He was earlier described as a “weird oddball” by a 50-year-old woman who gave evidence that he approached her and directed a sexual remark at her by asking her to go with him to “have some fun” on a secluded path in Edinburgh.

He is also accused of assaulting and repeatedly raping a former partner and causing her fear and alarm by shouting at her that she was “fat and ugly” and nobody else would want her.

The woman, 26, gave evidence that Turner subjected her to rough sex against her will, leaving her “bruised and bleeding”.

Turner pleads not guilty to all the charges and has lodged a special defence claiming sex was consensual. The trial, before Lord Braid, continues.