Afghan asylum seeker guilty of raping 12-year-old girl
An Afghan asylum seeker has been convicted of abducting and raping a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton.
Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, took the girl to a cul-de-sac on July 22 and subjected her to ‘extremely horrific sexual offences’.
He has been found guilty of child abduction, rape, two counts of sexual assault and taking an indecent video of the child.
He was cleared of a second count of rape. Warwick Crown Court jurors deliberated for seven hours and 39 minutes.
Co-defendant and fellow Afghan Mohammad Kabir was acquitted of intentional strangulation, committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual offence and attempting to abduct a child.
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Kabir, who is 24 according to court documents but told jurors he was 22, was cleared after maintaining that he did not touch the victim and had no sexual intentions towards her.
Mulakhil arrived in the UK on a small boat from France in March 2025 – four months before the attack.
He made an immigration application, claiming he faced ‘problems’ in Afghanistan.
Jurors were not told that Mulakhil arrived in Britain by small boat, or that Kabir had entered the UK via the same method on Christmas Day in 2024.
Mulakhil was remanded in custody and will be sentenced at a later date.
The rape sparked protests outside Nuneaton Town Hall when it happened last summer.
Flag-waving demonstrators chanted anti-government messages and had to be separated from counter-protestors by police.
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, claimed Warwickshire Police and the Home Office were guilty of concealing the immigration status of the two charged men.
Farage called on police forces across the UK to share the immigration status of charged suspects.
Days later, the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council released new guidance, encouraging police forces to release suspects’ ethnicity and nationality.
Deputy Chief Constable Sam de Reya said at the time: ‘Disinformation and incorrect narratives can take hold in a vacuum. It is good police work for us to fill this vacuum with the facts about issues of wider public interest.’
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