London-(Puntland Post)-Three Somali men who gang-raped a white 16-year-old girl in the bathroom of a hotel where they went to celebrate Eid have been jailed for 30 years.
Muhyadeen Osman, Bilal Ahmed and Mowled Yussuf, all now 20, were just teenagers when they attacked the girl at the Victoria Park Hotel in Manchester, regarding her as ‘easy prey’, the court heard.
The group, then all aged 17, had spent the previous night in the hotel with a number of other men as part of Eid celebrations when one of their friends, who had met the girl on BlackBerry Messenger, brought her round saying she should ‘meet his boys.’
In the run up to the assault the group moved from room to room looking for unlocked doors to hide from a porter.
They eventually got into a bedroom where Yussuf was first to force the girl to perform a sex act on him in the bathroom.
Despite her repeatedly telling the group that she didn’t want to have intercourse, she was forced to perform a sex act on Ahmed before he raped her.
Osman then joined in after he had been ‘hanging around’ outside the door. He then moved her to the bed and raped her himself.
Their victim, now a university student, was left alone as the gang dispersed – only to realise that her mobile phone and cash had been taken from her handbag.
She initially only reported the theft but the day after the attack in 2013 she revealed the extent of her ordeal.
DNA matching the offenders was recovered from the scene and she later picked the men out in identity parades.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, the teenager said she no longer felt confident to go out of the house and her education had suffered.
At Manchester Crown Court Yussuf was convicted of rape, oral rape and assault by penetration following a trial was jailed for ten years.
Ahmed, who was convicted of oral rape, was locked up for nine years whilst Osman got 12 years after being convicted of an unrelated robbery in which he mugged an innocent man on the street for his rings and mobile phone was also taken into account.
In dramatic scenes outside the courtroom around 60 members of Manchester’s Somalian community protested against the verdicts suggesting the three men were being ‘victimised’ because of their race, while the victim was a white Brit.
They managed to pile into the public gallery and gasped as the sentences were handed down – while Yussuf flicked a middle finger at the mother of their victim, who was present.
The court heard the girl was on her summer holidays between school and beginning her A-levels when she began talking to a friend of the gang Ibrahim Jama on BlackBerry Messenger.
They exchanged messages and agreed to meet – but as Jama met her at a bus stop shortly before 11am, he soon convinced her to perform a sex act on him in an alleyway.
Prosecuting, Henry Blackshaw said: ‘He then made reference to ‘his boys’ that were at the Victoria Park hotel, so she accompanied him.
‘Once in the hotel she was then involved in what was talked about as a game of going to hotel rooms with the group and hiding away from the porter.’
CCTV then captured the group and the girl disappearing into one hotel room for around 30 minutes while the attacks took place.
The court heard that all three men continue to protest their innocence and other men who had a sexual encounter with the victim on the same day have not been arrested.
On behalf of Osman, Michael Goldwater said: ‘What these defendants did wrong is allowing themselves to believe this young lady was willing to perform virtually any sex act on all of them, and failing to make an enquiry about her willingness or indeed to care very much one way or the other.
‘These were young, immature men who got carried away.’
But jailing the men, Judge David Hernandez said: ‘This was a large group of young men in a hotel and the inference is you all saw her as easy prey.
‘She didn’t really understand what was on your mind and that is probably because she was a naïve and sexually inexperienced and vulnerable young girl.
‘When you were running around that hotel she probably saw this as innocent, childish fun, but it all turned sinister when you got her into the bathroom. She found herself in a situation she was totally unable to control.
‘She found herself confronted with demands for sexual activity she did not wish to engage in and did not willingly consent. She had no choice and no opportunity to refuse.’
Jama was cleared of conspiracy to commit rape during the trial.
