Asylum seekers found guilty of Brighton beach rape

From the Brighton Argus and the Telegraph

Three asylum seekers have been found guilty of repeatedly raping a woman on Brighton beach in a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack after she became separated from her friends on a night out.

Iranian Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, and Egyptians Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, and Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, attacked the woman in the early hours of Oct 4 last year.

The trio behaved like a “predatory pack” after spotting the drunk victim as she staggered along the promenade around 5.45am after a night out.

They were all found guilty of rape by a jury of seven women and five men at Hove Crown Court on Thursday.

Prosecutor Hanna Llewellyn-Waters KC had told jurors: “Frankly, to these defendants, the complainant was meat. She was repeatedly abused for their sexual gratification and entertainment. They wanted sex and that could be achieved by being with someone who was in no state to resist them.”

She said the woman told police she recalled being spat on, kicked, and her throat being grabbed during the attack, as well as men laughing.

Giving evidence in the trial, the woman told the court: “It wasn’t consensual, it was not consensual, they are evil and they have ruined my life.”

Being cross-examined from behind a screen in court, she also cried as she said: “It’s the filmer’s face I see every time I close my eyes, laughing at me.”

In a video police interview played to jurors, recorded on October 13, 2025, the victim said she had been at a bar with friends until around 3am before going to a nightclub near the beach.

She said she regained consciousness lying on the beach and thought she was going to be killed.

In the recording, she said: “I closed my eyes because I thought ‘oh my God, they’re actually going to kill me’, I can hear all these voices and I can’t stop them.”

After the attack the men returned to their hotel by bus and later had a barbecue together in the evening, around the same time the woman was waiting to be medically examined. A video of Al-Danasurt wearing filtered sunglasses in a selfie with a lit barbecue was also shown in court.

Earlier on the night out, the friends went to a bar and nightclub on the beach where Alshafe was chatting to a woman via Google Translate about his hopes to marry a woman and have children and get citizenship in the UK. She said she would like to be friends with him but did not believe he just wanted that “because you’re touching my breasts”.

To which he replied: “I am forced by your beauty.”

The prosecution suggested what really happened on the night on October 4 was Alshafe had been knocked back by several women and was “on the prowl” with the co-defendants.

“That night, Mr Alshafe, you were nothing more than a nasty little predator,” Ms Llewellyn-Waters said to him in court.

At the time of the incident, all three defendants knew each other and were living at Home Office-approved hotel accommodation for asylum seekers near Horsham. The court heard Ahmadi and Alshafe met each other on a small boat from France arriving in the UK on June 19, 2025, while Alshafe and Al-Danasurt were roommates at the hotel.

The Argus can now reveal that Karin Al-Danasurt, one of the three men convicted of raping a woman on Brighton beach, is also a convicted murderer. Prosecutors told a plea hearing in November last year that Al-Danasurt was convicted of murder in Egypt before he crossed the Channel in a small boat.

Al-Danasurt claimed in his asylum application, which was found by Sussex Police, that he was wrongly convicted of murder. He states the conviction was a case of mistaken identity and blamed his brother for the killing. The judge withdrew the evidence from the case after his defence team contested the conviction.

A court in Egypt found him guilty in his absence after he made the journey across the Mediterranean to Europe,

Al-Danasurt filmed his two friends raping the woman – who cannot be identified for legal reasons – after they dragged her into the darkness on the beach.

Al-Danasurt spat on her and hissed “dirty b****” while he filmed the degrading attack.

The Egyptian struggled to understand the concept of consent and told the court: “Rape, to me, is sex.”

He denied recording the videos as “trophies” to show off to other migrants at the hotel near Horsham where he lived with his co-defendants.

The three men will be sentenced July 15 following a dangerousness assessment by the probation service. Border security and asylum minister Alex Norris said the Home Office will “move to deport them off British soil” once sentencing has taken place.