Sean 'Diddy' Combs' ex-girlfriend testifies he rebuffed pleas that escorts wear condoms
NEW YORK, June 6 (Reuters) - Sean "Diddy" Combs twice rebuffed a former girlfriend's requests that male entertainers wear condoms when having sex with her as Combs watched, the woman said on Friday during often tearful testimony at the hip-hop mogul's sex trafficking trial.
The woman, testifying under the pseudonym Jane to protect her privacy, said Combs would "guilt trip" her when she asked that the entertainers wear condoms during their frequent, lengthy sexual encounters. The sexual interactions resembled what another one of Combs' exes, Casandra Ventura, referred to as "Freak Offs" during her testimony last month.
Jurors in the Manhattan federal court trial heard an audio recording in which Combs intervened after Jane asked a male entertainer named Don if he had a condom. As the recording was played, Combs rapidly tapped his fingers against his leg while seated at the defense table.
"Why didn't you just insist that Don wear a condom?" prosecutor Maurene Comey asked.
"Because I just didn't want to disappoint my lover," Jane responded, referring to Combs. Jane said she and Combs dated from 2021 through 2024.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to five felony counts including racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. Prosecutors say he coerced women over two decades to take part in elaborate, drug-fueled sexual performances during Freak Offs over two decades.
The Bad Boy Records founder's defense lawyers have acknowledged that Combs was occasionally abusive in domestic relationships, but say the women who took part in Freak Offs did so consensually.
During the first day of her testimony on Thursday, Jane said she was "head over heels" for Combs and wanted to have a one-on-one relationship with him, but that starting five months into their relationship most of their time together involved sexual interactions with male escorts in hotels.
Jane said that when she told Combs she wanted those encounters to stop, he threatened to stop paying her rent.
On Friday, Jane frequently sobbed and dabbed her eyes with a tissue as she told jurors how Combs would encourage her to keep going even after she grew tired during the encounters, which she said often lasted 24 hours or more.
She recounted one instance in which she broke down crying after Combs said he had to leave following an encounter with an entertainer, despite having promised Jane a one-on-one date night and that the entertainer would be there for "just a little bit."
"I hung onto those words, just a little bit," Jane said. "I was feeling terrible that he was going to leave me alone."
Combs' defense lawyers are expected to cross-examine Jane next week. They may focus on sexually explicit text messages that she sent Combs in between their encounters to show she was a willing participant in their relationship.
Combs has been in federal lockup in Brooklyn since his September 2024 arrest. He could face life in prison if convicted on all counts.
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On the surface, Muhammed Asif Hafeez was an upstanding individual.A global businessman and ambassador of a prestigious London polo club, he rubbed shoulders with the British elite, including members of the Royal also regularly passed on detailed information to the authorities in the UK and Middle East that, in some cases, led to the interception of huge shipments of drugs. He was motivated, he said, simply by what he saw as his "moral obligation to curb and highlight criminal activities".At least, that is what he would have had people reality, Hafeez was himself what US officials described as "one of the world's most prolific drug traffickers".From his residence in the UK, he was the puppet-master of a vast drugs empire, supplying many tonnes of heroin, methamphetamine and hashish from bases in Pakistan and India that were distributed across the world. The gangs he informed on were his rivals - and his motivation was to rid the market of his status in the underworld earned him the moniker "the Sultan".But this criminal power and prestige would not last forever. After a complex joint operation between the British and American authorities, Hafeez, 66, was extradited from the UK in 2023. He pleaded guilty last November. On Friday, he was sentenced to 16 years in a New York prison for conspiring to import drugs - including enough heroin for "millions of doses" - into the US. Having been in custody since 2017, Hafeez's sentence will end in BBC has closely followed Hafeez's case. We have pieced together information from court documents, corporate listings and interviews with people who knew wanted to find out how he managed to stay under the radar for so long - and how he eventually got caught. Hafeez was born in September 1958 to a middle-class family in Lahore, Pakistan. One of six children, his upbringing was comfortable. People in Lahore who knew the family told the BBC that his father had owned a factory near the city. Hafeez also later told a US court that he had trained as a commercial the early 1990s to about the mid-2010s, he ran an outwardly legitimate umbrella company called Sarwani International Corporation, with subsidiary businesses in Pakistan, the UAE and the to its website - which has since been shut down - it sold technical equipment to militaries, governments and police forces throughout the world, including equipment for drug the other businesses under the Sarwani umbrella were a textiles company registered in various countries, an Italian restaurant in Lahore that was a franchise of a well-known Knightsbridge brand, and a company named Tipmoor, based near Windsor to the west of London, which specialised in "polo and equestrian services".These businesses not only afforded him a luxury lifestyle, but secured him access to the UK's most exclusive circles. He was listed as an international ambassador for the prestigious Ham Polo Club for at least three years, from 2009 to 2011. He and his wife Shahina were also photographed chatting to Prince William, and embracing Prince Harry, at the club in Polo Club told the BBC that Hafeez had never been a member of the club, that the club no longer has "ambassadors", and that the current board "has no ties to him". It added that the event at which Hafeez and his wife were photographed meeting the princes "was run by a third party".Sarwani's different global arms were dissolved at various stages in the 2010s, according to their listings on Companies House and equivalent global registries. 'Something fishy going on' A former Sarwani employee based in the UAE told the BBC he suspected there had been "something fishy going on" when he worked for the business, because even big projects were "only paid for in cash". The employee - who has asked not to be identified, for fear of reprisals - said he eventually left the business because he felt uncomfortable with this."There were no [bank] transactions, no records, no existence," he told the would also periodically write letters to the authorities in the UAE and UK informing on rival cartels, under the guise of being a concerned member of the public. The BBC has seen these, as well as letters he received in response from the British Embassy in Dubai and the UK Home Office, thanking him and expressing their appreciation for him getting in Home Office told the BBC it does not comment on individual Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Government of Dubai were contacted by the BBC for comment but did not respond. Members of Hafeez's family shared these letters with the BBC in 2018, while he was embroiled in a lengthy legal fight against extradition to the US. They also submitted them to courts in the UK and, later, to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), as evidence that he had been an informant and needed protection. All the courts disagreed and ruled that this was a ploy by Hafeez to rid the market of the ECHR said, was "someone who had brought to the attention of the authorities the criminal conduct of others who he knew to be actual or potential rivals to his substantial criminal enterprise". While Hafeez was writing these letters, a meeting took place in 2014 that - despite him not being there - would lead to his of Hafeez's close associates met a potential buyer from Colombia in a flat in Mombasa, Kenya. They burned a small amount of heroin in order to demonstrate how pure it was, and said they could supply him with any quantity of "100%... white crystal".The supplier of this high-quality heroin, they had told the buyer, was a man from Pakistan known as "the Sultan" - that is, they would soon learn was that the "buyer" from Colombia was actually working undercover for the US's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The entire meeting was part of an elaborate sting operation, and had been covertly filmed - footage that has been obtained by the BBC. US court documents reveal the deal was co-ordinated by Baktash and Ibrahim Akasha, two brothers who led a violent cartel in Kenya. Their father was himself a feared kingpin who had been killed in Amsterdam's Red Light District in deal also involved Vijaygiri "Vicky" Goswami, an Indian national who managed the Akashas' October 2014, with the Akashas, Goswami and Hafeez still unaware of who the buyers really were, 99kg of heroin and 2kg of crystal meth were delivered to the fake Colombian traffickers. The Akashas promised to provide hundreds of kilograms more of each drug.A month later, the Akasha brothers and Goswami were arrested in Mombasa. They were released on bail shortly afterwards, and spent over two years fighting extradition to the the background, American law enforcers were working with counterparts in the UK to piece together their case against Hafeez, partly using evidence gathered from devices they had seized when they arrested Goswami and the Akasha brothers. On those, they had found multiple references to Hafeez as a major supplier, and were able to find enough evidence to identify him as "the Sultan".Facing charges in the US didn't stop one of the men, Goswami, from continuing his illegal enterprise. In 2015, while on bail in Kenya, he hatched a plan with Hafeez to transport several tonnes of a drug called ephedrine from a chemical factory in Solapur, India, to a powerful medication that is legal in limited quantities, is used to make methamphetamine. The two men - Goswami and Hafeez - planned to set up a meth factory in Mozambique's capital, Maputo, US court documents show. But their scheme was abandoned in 2016, when police raided the Solapur plant and seized 18 tonnes of Akasha brothers and Goswami finally boarded a flight to the US to face trial in January 2017. Hafeez was arrested eight months later in London, at his flat in the affluent St John's Wood neighbourhood. He was detained at high security Belmarsh Prison in south-east London, and it was from there that he spent six years fighting extradition to the US.A big development happened in 2019 in the US. Goswami pleaded guilty, and told a New York court he had agreed to co-operate with prosecutors. The Akasha brothers also pleaded Akasha was sentenced to 25 years in prison. His brother Ibrahim was sentenced to 23 who is yet to be sentenced, would have testified against Hafeez in the US had the case gone to Belmarsh, Hafeez was running out of tried to stop extradition to the US - but failed to convince magistrates, the High Court in London and the ECHR that he had, in fact, been an informant to the authorities who was "at risk of ill-treatment from his fellow prisoners" as a result. He also claimed the conditions in a US prison would be "inhuman and degrading" for him because of his health conditions, including type 2 diabetes and lost all of these arguments at every stage and was extradited in May case did not go to trial. In November last year, Hafeez pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiring to manufacture and distribute heroin, methamphetamine and hashish and to import them into the US. Pre-sentencing, prosecutors described the "extremely fortunate circumstances" of Hafeez's life, which "throw into harsh relief his decision to scheme... and to profit from the distribution of dangerous substances that destroy lives and whole communities"."Unlike many traffickers whose drug activities are borne, at least in part, from desperation, poverty, and a lack of educational opportunities," they said, "the defendant has lived a life replete with privilege and choice."
