Three asylum seekers who entered Britain illegally via small boat have been convicted of gang raping a woman on Brighton beach after targeting her as she walked alone along the seafront in the early hours of the morning following a night out.
Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, from Iran, and Egyptians Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, and Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, were found guilty by a jury at Lewes Crown Court of repeatedly raping the 33-year-old victim behind a beach hut in the early hours of 4 October last year. All three had been staying at a Home Office-approved asylum hotel in Brighton at the time of the attack. They denied all charges but were convicted and will be sentenced at a later date.
The court heard that the three men spent the evening filming themselves getting ready before heading into Brighton by bus, where they visited several nightclubs. CCTV footage shown to jurors captured them groping multiple women throughout the night, including a friend of the eventual victim. In one clip, Alshafe was seen attempting to converse with a woman in Horizon nightclub using Google Translate, as neither spoke the other’s language. In the exchange, he told her he intended to “build his future, meet a woman, get married, have children and become a citizen” in Britain.
When Horizon closed at 5am, the three men left and targeted the victim, who had also been drinking there. She described herself as “paralytic drunk” and told police in a video interview that she had no recollection of how she came to be on the beach, drifting in and out of consciousness as three men abused her. She recalled seeing a phone flash in her face and hearing a foreign voice calling her a “dirty b****.”
Al-Danasurt filmed the assault on his mobile phone and subsequently shared the footage. When challenged in court about why he had recorded it, he claimed he had done so to “gather evidence for police” and to protect himself. Prosecutor Hanna Llewellyn-Waters challenged that account directly, pointing out that he had done “precisely nothing” to stop the assault and had returned to the asylum hotel the following morning to hold a barbecue with his co-defendants — footage of which was also played to the jury.
Al-Danasurt’s answers under cross-examination drew particular attention. When asked whether he understood the distinction between rape and consensual sex, he told the court: “Rape to me is sex.” He added that the victim “wasn’t able to say anything” and acknowledged she was not consenting, but maintained he had not participated.
Alshafe, for his part, claimed the attack represented his first sexual experience. “I was happy that I’m trying something like that for the first time,” he told prosecutors.
Prosecutors described the three men as operating like a “predatory pack,” having spent the evening groping women before identifying and isolating a lone, heavily intoxicated victim. The trio returned to their taxpayer-funded accommodation after the assault, where they filmed themselves cooking on a portable barbecue in the hotel grounds.
