A 15-year-old girl was supplied with cannabis and subjected to sexual abuse by a group of men in a North Wales seaside town, a jury has heard, as a trial opened involving allegations that three teenage girls were trafficked and repeatedly raped.
Caernarfon Crown Court heard that the girl, who was 15 at the time, first encountered Mustafa Iqbal, 43, on a street in Rhyl in 2022 while under the influence of cannabis. Iqbal, described as a scooter-riding takeaway driver and alleged drug dealer, invited her and a friend back to his home to smoke. Once there, the girl alleged, three men subjected her to sexual touching.
In police interview footage played to the jury, the teenager described feeling “gross” during a sex act she said she was made to perform. She also alleged she was raped by Iqbal and by Mohamed Usman Arshad, 36, who ran a local café.
The girl further alleged that she visited the flat of a third defendant, Ziaullah Badshah, 25, during Ramadan to smoke cannabis. “He was horrible,” she told police. “He treated me like a prostitute.”
The court also heard that the girl was driven to London by a fourth defendant, Jaswinder Singh, 65, to obtain a fake passport so she could gain entry to nightclubs in the capital. Singh, who lived on disability benefits, allegedly provided her with cannabis during the trip. When police became involved after a friend raised concerns about the girl’s welfare, she said she tried to protect the men and no charges followed at that stage. The jury heard Singh had instructed the girl to pose as his 22-year-old carer in front of his sister, so she would not suspect his involvement in an “Asian grooming gang.”
Opening the prosecution case, Owen Edwards KC told the jury that three girls aged 14, 15 and 16 had been treated as “sexual commodities” by the defendants.
All four men — Iqbal, Arshad, Badshah and Singh, all of Rhyl — deny more than 20 counts of conspiracy to traffic children for sexual exploitation. A fifth defendant, Sarah Gray, 53, of Gronant, faces charges of conspiracy to supply cocaine and cannabis, as well as allowing her home to be used for sexual exploitation and perverting the course of justice by washing bedding following an alleged rape involving handcuffs of the 16-year-old girl.
The trial continues.
