A 17-year-old girl was lured from her home county by taxi in the early hours of the morning, taken to an unfamiliar house in Bristol and allegedly raped repeatedly by four Afghan nationals over several hours after being plied with alcohol and cigarettes, a jury has heard.
Bristol Crown Court was told the alleged attack began after Mehrab Safi, 21, met the girl while she was Christmas shopping with a friend. Within days he had obtained her Snapchat details and requested nude photographs of her. On the night of 30 November last year, Safi and co-defendant Salman Habibkheil, 19, arranged for a taxi to collect the teenager from her home in Somerset in the early hours of Sunday morning.
She was initially dropped off in an industrial area of Bristol where the two men were waiting, before a second taxi took them all to a house in the St Werburghs area of the city. Once inside, she was given vodka and cigarettes. The prosecution alleges she was then raped by Safi and subsequently by the other three defendants — including a 16-year-old boy who cannot be named — who allegedly “took it in turns to get her alone in a bedroom or in a bed and to have sex with her against her wishes.”
Prosecutor Ed Hetherington told jurors: “She was alone. She was isolated in an unfamiliar city miles from home, in the dead of night, with a house full of men she didn’t know. We say she was raped and she was abused repeatedly over a period of several hours.” He described the case as one of grooming that had begun only days before the alleged rapes, adding that the alcohol and cigarettes were used “to secure her compliance.”
The alleged assault came to an end when the girl’s mother contacted police.
The four defendants all deny the charges against them. Safi faces one count of human trafficking and two charges of rape. Habibkheil has pleaded not guilty to one count of human trafficking and one charge of rape. Awal Ahmadzai, 19, denies one charge of rape and one of assault by penetration. The 16-year-old boy denies one charge of rape. The trial, reported by The Sun, is expected to last up to three weeks.
