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A migrant who abducted and raped a child shortly after coming to Britain by people smuggler boat has been found guilty and faces a lengthy prison sentence and deportation.
Afghan boat migrant Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, who Warwickshire Crown Court heard laughed as he raped a 12-year-old girl while filming the abuse has been found guilty of rape of a child, abduction, two counts of sexual assault and taking an indecent video. The jury failed to reach a verdict on Monday but agreed unanimously to convict on those charged after over seven hours of deliberation on Tuesday. Mulakhil was found not guilty on a second count of rape.
He had appeared in court besides a second Afghan migrant who was accused of strangulation and attempted taking of a child, and who was found not guilty on all counts.
The court had previously heard how Mulakhil met the young girl at a play park in Nuneaton, Warwickshire on 22 July 2025 before taking her to a secluded, but nevertheless public, residential road to be raped. The court heard the victim’s statement that Mulakhil had threatened the child’s family during the attack.
After the attack, the girl was discovered by members of the public who then called police.
Now-convicted child rapist Mulakhil had maintained as defence through the trial that he hadn’t wanted to have sex with the girl at first, that she’d been deceptive over her true age, that she’d “insisted” he make the video recording of the rape on his phone, and that “she drove all of it, and that she consented throughout”. The prosecution told the court that he’d remained unrepentant and hadn’t considered in retrospect that he’d made a mistake.
The Afghan migrant had arrived in the United Kingdom just four months before the attack on a small boat crossing of the English Channel. He was able to be identified quickly by police because he’d used his government issued and funded debit card to buy a drink after the attack. Officers also recovered Mulakhil’s DNA from the 12-year-old victim’s skin and from inside her shorts.
Warwickshire Police praised the “immense courage” of the victim for helping them to bring the prosecution against the asylum seeker.
The case gathered considerable public attention as it came amid a national conversation about the wisdom of the government housing large numbers of recently arrived boat migrants in local communities across the country, often in converted hotels or private homes rented by agents of the state. The Nuneaton child rape took place only weeks after a separate sex attack on a child by a boat migrant living in a hotel in Epping, Essex, which itself triggered weeks of unrest.
Nuneaton locals also protested against the rape, and against what had been called an attempted coverup by local police, who did not initially reveal they’d arrested an Afghan asylum seeker. Reform Party Warwickshire County Council leader George Finch had a part in initially exposing the now-proven crime and had battled with police to get information into the public domain. As reported last year:
