Asylum seekers ‘gang-raped vulnerable woman on beach as she made her way home from night out, with one filming ordeal’, trial told
Asylum seekers ‘gang-raped vulnerable woman on beach as she made her way home from night out, with one filming ordeal’, trial told
A woman described as ‘extremely vulnerable’ was sexually assaulted by three asylum seekers, who laughed and spat at her as one recorded the harrowing incident, the court was told.
The alleged attackers reportedly treated her as ‘meat,’ dragging her onto pebbles in a secluded part of Brighton beach, where they took turns to rape her. The woman, whose identity has not been disclosed, said she was left bloodied and drifting in and out of consciousness during the attack. Mobile phone footage appeared to show one of the perpetrators posing for the camera and sticking his tongue out.
Opening the prosecution case, Hanna Llewellyn-Waters stated that the victim, a woman in her thirties, was ‘pretty much incapacitated’ and alone after separating from her friend during the assault. ‘Instead of offering her help or even just leaving her be, these defendants targeted her,’ she explained to the jury. ‘That targeting was not founded in good will or bonhomie, high spirits—it was cynical, predatory, and callous. To these defendants, she was meat, she was there to be used as a receptacle, and that’s what they did.’
Two of the three asylum seekers face charges of physical rape, while the third is accused of four counts of rape by instigating the attacks and allegedly filming sections of the assault. Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, denies recording the woman as she was attacked by him and two other men.
The prosecutor emphasized that the defendants took the woman away from the relative safety of the main drag and into a pebbled area near a wall. The court was informed that the woman had spent several hours drinking with her friends and was ‘falling over drunk,’ unable to maintain her balance or control her limbs.
“I’ve been drunk many a time, I’ve never had this like feeling before. I could see a light in my face, like, do you know, like, when you put a flash on a, like, on the camera on an iPhone and I could hear a foreign accent saying: ‘Dirty bitch, dirty bitch’.”
The woman described the experience as ‘as if [her] soul was leaving [her] body.’ Jurors were shown footage of the ‘motionless’ woman, lying on her back with her eyes closed, while Abdulla Amih Ahmadi and Ibrahim Alshafe were penetrating her. A clip from Al-Danasurt’s phone revealed Ahmadi covering his face with his hand during the alleged attack, possibly to shield it from the camera.
Another pixelated clip displayed Alshafe lifting his head to face the camera, smiling and sticking his tongue out. The court heard that Ahmadi fled the Cisswood House Hotel the day after the alleged rapes, moving to an address in Crewe without Home Office approval. He was later arrested by police the following week.
