A notorious thug was cleared of a Glenochil prison attack on the man dubbed the Millenium rapist after his alleged victim claimed he couldn’t remember what happened.

Andrew Iveson (25) went on trial at Falkirk Sheriff Court last Tuesday (5 August), accused of striking fellow inmate Edward McVeigh with a kettle, pouring water on him and repeatedly knifing him in an attack at the Clackmannanshire jail, leaving him seriously injured and scarred.

McVeigh – who was jailed for seven years in 2000 after admitting raping a teenage virgin at the Millenium celebrations in Glasgow’s George Square – initially refused to give evidence at the trial.

When he finally took to the witness box he told the court he could not remember the incident on 18 August 2011.

He said, “I can’t remember the fight and I didn’t give a statement.

“I didn’t even want to be here today.

“I remember the police coming to speak to me in Glenochil Prison about a fight I was in, in a cell but I can’t remember who I was fighting with.” Fiscal depute Susan Dickson then withdrew the Crown case and Iveson was found not guilty by Sheriff William Gallagher.

McVeigh’s brutal sex attack on the 19-year-old student took place on the roof of a university building while revellers below were celebrating the Millenium.

She met him when they both became separated from their friends and kissed and cuddled him at midnight before going to the rooftop.

After she used her mobile telephone to call her friends in “good humour”, he took it from her and threw it off the roof, then punched her so severely that she was almost unrecognisable when she was taken to hospital.

A doctor at the city’s Royal Infirmary “had never seen such terrible bruising”.

Judge Lord Carloway told McVeigh, “This was a brutal rape at a time when she ought to have been happily celebrating the new millennium.” Thug Iveson is also no stranger to the prison system.

He was jailed for 18 months in 2011 after admitting leaving victims scarred for life after knocking them unconscious with just once punch.

His brutal actions were described as “extraordinary” by a sheriff.

He attacked one victim at a pub in Cumnock, Ayrshire, leaving him lying unconscious in a pool of blood in January 2010 and also assaulted a man at a house party in town.

Later that year he was caught setting fire to a block of flats in Cumnock in a vendetta attack after he filmed himself starting the blaze on his mobile then showed footage to partygoers.

In the footage he is seen breaking up bits of wood and throwing them into the fire while shouting “threaten my family eh?”.