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		</div><p>R Kelly’s fate is in the hands of jurors after weeks of lurid testimony in his sexual misconduct trial in New York.</p>
<p>A jury of seven men and five women began deliberating on racketeering and sex trafficking charges against the R&;B superstar on Friday.</p>
<p>Prosecutors and defence lawyers finished their closing arguments this week.</p>
<p>The 54-year-old singer is accused of running a Chicago-based criminal enterprise that recruited his accusers for unwanted sex and mental torment.</p>
<p>The witnesses said Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage. He has denied any wrongdoing.</p>
<p>Kelly “believed the music, the fame and the celebrity meant he could do whatever he wanted”, Assistant US Attorney Nadia Shihata said in federal court in Brooklyn in a fiery rebuttal to the defence’s closing argument that portrayed Kelly as a victim of false accusations.</p>
<p>She added: “He’s not a genius, he’s a criminal, a predator.”</p>
<p>She added that his alleged victims “aren’t groupies or gold diggers, they’re human beings”.</p>
<p>After Ms Shihata finished, US District Judge Ann Donnelly started her final instructions for jurors, who later began deliberating.</p>
<p>Kelly, perhaps best known for the 1996 smash hit I Believe I Can Fly” has pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges accusing him of abusing women, girls and boys for more than two decades.</p>
<p>He is also charged with multiple violations of the Mann Act, which makes it illegal to transport anyone across state lines “for any immoral purpose”.</p>
<p>Prosecutors say their evidence proves how Kelly, with the help of some loyal members of his entourage, used tactics from “the predator playbook” to sexually exploit his victims.</p>
<p>The tactics included isolating them in hotel rooms or his recording studio, subjecting them to degrading rules like making them call him “Daddy” and shooting video recordings — some seen by the jury at trial — of them having sex with him and others as a means to control them, prosecutors said.</p>
<p>In his closing speech, defence attorney Deveraux Cannick told the jury that testimony by several accusers was full of lies, and that “the government let them lie”.</p>
<p>Mr Cannick argued there was no evidence Kelly’s accusers were forced to do anything against their will.</p>
<p>Instead, Mr Cannick said, Kelly’s girlfriends stuck around because he spoiled them with free air travel, shopping sprees and fancy dinners — treatment that belied the predator label.</p>
<p>“He gave them a lavish lifestyle,” he said. “That’s not what a predator is supposed to do.”</p>
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