Three men who raped a 17-year-old girl before escaping from the UK to France in the back of a lorry have been jailed for a total of 33 years.
Mehrab Safi, 21, Salman Habibkheil and Awal Ahmadzai, both 19, and a 17-year-old boy plied the girl with alcohol after she had been persuaded to travel into Bristol alone, and all four raped her at a house in the city.
Safi was found guilty of two counts of rape, and Habibkheil of one. Both were convicted of arranging or facilitating the travel of a female with a view to exploitation. Ahmadzai was found guilty of one count of rape and one of sexual assault. The 17-year-old was convicted of one count of rape.
Safi was jailed for 15 years while Habibkheil and Ahmadzai were jailed for nine years. The 17-year-old was sentenced to two years and seven months in a youth detention centre.
The victim had met Safi in Bristol during a trip she made in November 2025 to do some Christmas shopping with a friend – her first trip to the city from her home in Somerset, Bristol crown court heard.
Immediately after they left, Safi began messaging the girl. He told her he loved her and asked her to send indecent images.
Four days later, Safi, in collaboration with Habibkheil, arranged for her to be collected by a taxi and brought into Bristol. She was taken to his house where she was raped over several hours.
The victim’s mother reported her missing and police found her and the 17-year-old boy at Safi’s house.
As officers arrived, the three men fled, eventually managing to make their way across the Channel in the back of lorry carrying frozen goods.
Footage from Safi’s mobile phone showed the men laughing and gesticulating in the back of the lorry, which the prosecution suggested showed they thought they had escaped. But they were swiftly arrested in France and returned to the UK.
The girl had been raped five times by the four offenders. In a victim personal statement, the girl said she felt like a different person now and could not leave her home alone. She had put on hold her dreams of going to college and working with children.
Bristol crown court was told the four were born in Afghanistan and displaced as young people by the “brutality” of the Taliban regime.
Habibkheil had lost his father to the Taliban and was instructed by relatives to travel to England. Ahmadzai had ambitions of being a mechanic when he arrived in the UK but was unable to as an asylum seeker. He is believed to have post-traumatic stress disorder and was terrified of being deported to Afghanistan.
The 17-year-old offender lost his parents in Afghanistan and fled to the UK aged 11. The court heard he suffered “horrendous abuse” en route to England, arriving aged 12. He had flashbacks and nightmares.
But Judge Cullum said their experiences did not excuse the serious psychological harm they had caused to a “vulnerable” girl who had been “groomed and trapped”.
DS Jo Babbage, of Avon and Somerset police, praised the girl’s bravery in telling police her story and being questioned in court. “It’s impossible to overstate the courage she has shown,” she said.
Babbage said: “We do understand there is going to be anxiety in communities, but we need to be clear that this is not about a culture, a community, any religious belief. This is about deep-rooted misogyny and criminal behaviour in individuals.”
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