Three asylum seekers found guilty of raping woman in ‘callous’ attack on Brighton beach
Three asylum seekers were found guilty of repeatedly raping a woman after she was separated from friends on a night out on Brighton beach in a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack.
A hearing at Hove Crown Court heard the woman was targeted by men because she was “staggering in the street” and “clumsy” in the early hours of October 4 last year.
Two of the men took her behind a beach hut in the East Sussex city and raped her, while the other went to the scene a few minutes later and filmed it.
Ibrahim Alshafe, a 25-year-old Egyptian national, and Abdulla Ahmadi, a 26-year-old Iranian national, were found guilty of two counts of rape by jurors on Thursday.
Karin Al-Danasurt, a 20-year-old Egyptian national, was also found guilty of four counts of rape as a secondary party to inciting and filming the ordeal.
Jurors returned their verdict during the five-week trial after deliberating for more than 12 hours.
Footage shown to jurors showed Alshafe smiling and sticking out his tongue during the attack, as well as slapping the woman in the face.
She and Ahmadi claimed during the trial that the encounter was consensual and that he approached them on the seashore, kissed and touched them both, said something about sex and took them both to the beach.
Al-Danasurt, who told jurors he tried to stop the attack by filming it, also denied spitting into the woman’s mouth and called her a “dirty bitch”.
Prosecutor Hanna Llewellyn-Waters KC told jurors: “Frankly, for these defendants, the complaint was just meat.
“She was abused repeatedly for sexual gratification and entertainment.
“They wanted sex, and this could be achieved by being with someone who was in no position to resist them.”
He said the woman told police she was spat on, kicked, choked and men laughed during the attack.
Testifying at the hearing, the woman told the court: “There was no consent, there was no consent, these are evil and they destroyed my life.”
The woman, who was cross-examined behind a screen in court, cried as she said: “Every time I close my eyes, I see the face of the filmmaker smiling at me.”
In a video police interview played to jurors and recorded on October 13, 2025, the victim said he was at a bar with friends until around 3 a.m. before heading to a nightclub near the beach.
He said he regained consciousness while lying on the beach and thought he was going to be killed.
“I closed my eyes because I thought, ‘Oh my God, they’re really going to kill me,’ I can hear all these noises and I can’t stop them,” he said in the recording.
The court also heard that the woman spoke to her friends minutes after leaving the men and was “crying and hysterically saying she had been raped.”
DNA samples were taken from all three defendants, and while both Alshafe and Ahmadi’s DNA matched samples taken from the complainant’s body during a forensic medical examination, Al-Danasurt’s was inconclusive.
All three defendants knew each other at the time of the incident and were living in a Home Office-approved hotel for asylum seekers near Horsham, West Sussex.
The court heard that Ahmadi and Alshafe met on a small boat arriving in the UK from France on June 19, 2025, and that Alshafe and Al-Danasurt were roommates at the hotel.
Al-Danasurt arrived in the UK on 21 September 2024.
Jurors heard Alshafe’s asylum application was rejected on October 3, but he told the court he was unaware of updates to his case before traveling to Brighton that night.
The trio got ready at the hotel before boarding the bus to Brighton on the night of October 3.
A Snapchat video shows them in front of a mirror at the hotel around 7.30pm, with Ahmedi placing a durag (a tight cloth tied around the top of her head) over Al-Danasurt and pointing at the camera as Alshafe smiles.
Earlier in the night, the friends went to a beachside bar and nightclub, where Alshafe chatted to a woman via Google Translate about his hopes of marrying, having children and obtaining UK citizenship.
He said he wanted to be friends with her, but he didn’t believe she only wanted it “because you touched my breasts.”
He replied: “Your beauty compels me.”
The prosecution argued that what actually happened on the night of 4 October was that Alshafe was repelled by several women and “on the prowl” with the other defendants.
“That night, Mr Alshafe, you were nothing but a disgusting little predator,” Ms Llewellyn-Waters told him in court.
After the attack, the men returned to their hotel by bus and had a barbecue together in the evening. At the same time, the woman was also waiting for a medical examination.
A video of Al-Danasurt wearing filtered sunglasses and taking a selfie with a lit barbecue was also shown in court.
The court heard 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 move was not approved by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Ahmadi was marked as a “runaway, self-abandoned” from his accommodation.
On October 13, Alshafe and Al-Danasurt, from Lower Beeding, near Horsham, were arrested by police at their hotel.
The additional charge Al-Danasurt faced, of “sharing private films” without the complainant’s consent, was withdrawn on Thursday, April 23, after it was determined that the offense could only be tried in the magistrates’ court.
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