Asylum seekers found guilty of raping woman on beach
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Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, and Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, have today been found guilty at Hove Crown Court of raping a woman on Brighton beach in October last year.
More to follow.
‘Cynical, predatory and callous’
The attack has been described as “cynical, predatory and callous” after the woman became separated from her friends on a night out.
All three men denied raping the 33-year-old woman.
Woman ‘targeted’ by men
A trial at Hove Crown Court heard the woman was targeted by the men as she was “staggering in the street” and was “incapacitated” in the early hours of October 4 last year.
Two of the men took her behind a beach hut where they raped her and the other went to the location moments later and filmed it.
Egyptian national Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, and Iranian national Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, were both found guilty of two counts of rape by jurors today.
Egyptian national Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, was also found guilty of all four counts of rape as a secondary party by encouraging and filming the ordeal.
Men denied attack
Alshafe and Ahmadi had claimed during the trial the encounter was consensual and that she had approached them along the seafront, kissed and touched them both, said something about sex and took them both to the beach.
Al-Danasurt, who claimed to jurors he tried to stop the attack by filming it, also denied he spat in the woman’s mouth and called her a “dirty bitch”.
Two met each other on small boat
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.
Al-Danasurt arrived in the UK on September 21, 2024.
Jurors heard Alshafe’s asylum application had been refused on October 3, but he told the court he did not know about the update to his case before going to Brighton that night.
‘Nasty little predator’
The trio got ready at the hotel before getting the bus into Brighton on the night of October 3.
A Snapchat video shows them at around 7.30pm at the hotel in front of a mirror with Ahmadi sorting a durag – a close-fitting cloth tied around the top of the head – on Al-Danasurt, who gestures to the camera, filmed by Alshafe smiling.
The defendants get ready before going out: Karin Al-Danasurt (seated), Ibrahim Alshafe (holding the camera) and Abdulla Ahmadi (Image: Sussex Police)
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.
Men had barbecue hours after attack
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.
Karin Al-Danasurt enjoys a barbecue at the asylum hotel where he was living hours after the incident (Image: Sussex Police)
Ahmadi left the hotel the day after the rape and moved to an address in Crewe, Cheshire, where he was arrested on October 12, the court heard.
The move had not been approved by the Home Office and Ahmadi had been marked as “absconding, self-departing” from the accommodation.
On October 13, Alshafe and Al-Danasurt, both of Lower Beeding, near Horsham, were arrested by police at their hotel.
Sentencing in July
The three men will be sentenced July 15 following a dangerousness assessment by the probation service.
Woman treated like ‘meat’
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.”
The court also heard minutes after leaving the men, the woman spoke to her friends and was described as “wailing and hysterical saying she has been raped”.
Home Office ‘will move to deport’ men
Border security and asylum minister Alex Norris said the Home Office will “move to deport them off British soil” once sentencing has taken place.
He added that he “shares the public’s outrage in their horrendous actions”.
Read the full statement here.
Asylum minister Alex Norris
Asylum seeker is a ‘convicted murderer’, court told
Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, is one of three migrants convicted of raping a woman on Brighton beach.
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.
Read more here.
Karin Al-Danasurt (Image: Sussex News and Pictures)
Rape victim ‘immensely brave’
On the steps of Hove Trial Centre after the conviction, Detective Chief Superintendent Richard McDonagh described the victim as “immensely brave”.
He said: “This young woman has shown incredible strength to report to the police, support our investigation and give evidence in court, in extremely difficult circumstances.
“I cannot commend her enough. Thanks to her, three predatory offenders have been brought to justice and will now face sentencing for their crimes.”
Watch the full statement here.
Crown Prosecution Service statement
Holly Morton, deputy chief crown prosecutor from the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “This was an utterly appalling and violent attack on a woman unable to consent to any sexual activity.
“These men targeted her in a cynical, predatory and callous way, dragging her to a secluded spot, before repeatedly raping her for their own sexual gratification.
“None of us can begin to imagine what the woman went through that night. She described drifting in and out of consciousness and hearing the men laughing.
“Thanks to the bravery of the victim in reporting what happened to her that night, we have been able to bring these dangerous men to justice and ensure that they cannot target women again.”
Kemi Badenoch ‘disgusted’
Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, told reporters in Pembrokeshire that she was “disgusted” after hearing asylum seekers had been found guilty of repeatedly raping a woman on Brighton beach.
She said: “There are people who are taking our country for a ride, are coming here trying to claim asylum, which is for genuine refugees, when really they come here to do harm to others.
“This is why it’s really important that we solve this small boats crisis, that’s why I’ve changed the Conservative Party policy.
“As a woman in particular, I do worry so much about a lot of men coming here with attitudes that are backwards and medieval and thinking that they can do whatever they like.
“We need to be very tough on them… We want to see consequences for people who assault, people who rape.
“I do not want women in this country being worried about what’s going to happen to them. For a very long time, people were feeling very safe on the streets of the United Kingdom.
“In every nation, this is changing. We need to get back to the country we used to be.”
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch visiting Valero Pembroke Refinery, Pembrokeshire (Image: Eleanor Storey/PA Wire)