One of the men accused of killing black teenager Stephen Lawrence has insisted: "I am an innocent man".
In dramatic clashes with prosecutor Mark Ellison QC at the Old Bailey, David Norris, 35, was asked time and time again what he was doing on the night Mr Lawrence died. In apparent exasperation, he declared: "You are accusing me of murder. I am an innocent man."
Norris insisted he was not in the Eltham area on April 22 1993, when Mr Lawrence was stabbed to death by a racist gang.
"How do you know that?" asked Mr Ellison. "Because I am innocent," Norris declared.
Norris and Gary Dobson, 36, deny murder.
Norris said at the age of 16, his mother would not have allowed him to be away from his home in Chislehurst, Kent, on a weekday night.
Asked about whether he had a girlfriend named Cheryl in Eltham at the time, Norris said he did not recognise the name. But Mr Ellison asked him to look at a transcript of a 1999 television interview he did with Martin Bashir. He asked him if he had agreed that it was 50-50 whether he was in Eltham on the night. He said: "No, sir."
Norris said he had never been able to remember what he was doing on the night, but he had not attacked Mr Lawrence. He added: "I had no girlfriend by the name of Cheryl that I can remember."
Mr Ellison read from the transcript: "Interviewer 'On the day in question, as best you can remember, it is most likely you spent some of the day in Eltham?'
"Answer: 'Yes.' Interviewer: 'So you may have been in Eltham with your girlfriend that night?' "Answer: '50%, yeah.'" Mr Ellison asked: "Making things up for TV?" Norris replied: "I don't remember saying it."