A SPANISH exchange student was left in hospital and unable to eat properly for months after he was punched in the head during a street brawl, a court has heard.

Frederick Edwards, 21, of Cowley Road, East Oxford, denies two charges of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Carlos Casas, and assaulting Manuel Soler on a night out on December 15 last year.

The jury of eight women and four men was sworn in as Edwards' trial began at Oxford Crown Court on Monday.

Speaking through a Spanish interpreter Carlos Casas, an Erasmus student at Oxford Brookes University said that he had been with his friend Manuel at the Emporium nightclub at St Ebbes St, Oxford, when a fight started inside.

He told jurors that the pair then left the club only to be confronted with a second brawl between a large group of men near to the Halifax bank at Oxford's Queen Street.

Speaking yesterday, he told jurors that he had not been involved in the fight but had begun to intervene to 'calm the situation down' and to assist one of his friend's who had been drawn into the violence between a group of about 20 people.

In a video shown to jurors and filmed by Mr Casas' friend Manuel, Edwards is seen to take a step before punching Casas flooring him.

Casas sustained a fractured jaw and was treated at the John Radcliffe Hospital the same night. He told jurors he could not eat properly for 3 months after the attack.

Edwards, a property and planning student at Oxford Brookes University and originally from Canterbury, Kent, also took to the witness box yesterday.

He claimed that he had acted 'in self defence' and said that he felt threatened and scared by Carlos who was coming at him with hands raised during the brawl.

He said: "I felt a very real threat. I believed that if I punched one then the others would go 'let's just leave it'. My friends were in danger."

Answering questions from police during interview and after he was arrested he described his punch, as a 'seven out of ten' for severity.

He is also accused of assaulting Mr Soler by kicking him while he was filming the incident, a charge he also denies.

The trial continues.