Man arrested 35 years after woman raped and kidnapped
Maisie Lillywhite - Gloucestershire
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A man was arrested in Gloucester on Wednesday morning in connection to crimes committed against a woman in the 1970s and 80s
A 69-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the rape and kidnap of a woman which took place more than three decades ago.
Gloucestershire police confirmed a man was arrested at a property in Gloucester on Wednesday in connection with a number of violent sexual offences committed in the 70s and 80s.
Officers are carrying out a search of the property and the man is in police custody.
Det Ch Insp Wayne Usher said: "These violent sexual offences were committed over a sustained period and have had a lasting impact on the victim."
"While decades may have passed, we continue to investigate these offences due to the seriousness of them as we try to hold the individual responsible accountable," Usher added.
The man was arrested on suspicion of rape, kidnap, indecent assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Ibrahim Alshafe (left) raped a woman while Karin Al-Danasurt (right) filmed the incident. a jury hears
A woman who was raped by two men on Brighton beach while a third filmed the incident said she thought she was going to be killed in the attack, a court has heard.
Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, an Iranian national living in Crewe, Cheshire, and 25-year-old Ibrahim Alshafe, an Egyptian living in Horsham, each deny two counts of rape.
Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, also an Egyptian living in Horsham, is accused of having filmed the attack. He denies four counts of rape as a secondary party "encouraging the rape by his actions at the scene, including filming it".
The trial of the three men, who are asylum seekers, began at Hove Crown Court on Tuesday.
The court heard on Wednesday that the men targeted the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, after she became separated from her friends while on a girls' night out.
Prosecutors allege Alshafe and Ahmadi repeatedly raped the woman on Brighton beach in the early hours of 4 October last year, while Al-Danasurt filmed the attack.
In a recording of an interview played to jurors, the woman was asked what she could remember from the night of the alleged attack.
Ahmadi denies two counts of rape
She said she had been at a bar with friends until about 03:00 GMT before going to a nightclub near the beach.
"I remember taking drinks off this Asian man but then I remember being on my hands and knees in the toilet being sick," she said.
"After that I don't remember anything."
Later in the interview, 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."
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At the time of the alleged offences, all three defendants knew each other and were residents of a hotel near Horsham housing asylum seekers, jurors heard.
Al-Danasurt also denies a fifth count of "sharing intimate films" without the woman's consent.
The charge relates to an allegation that Al-Danasurt sent recordings of the alleged rapes to Ahmadi's phone shortly after the attack.
Woman ‘raped by migrants on Brighton beach’ feared they would kill her
Telegraph reporters
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The alleged victim said she was raped on Brighton beach after being given a drink in a nightclub that made her violently ill - Gareth Fuller/PA
A woman allegedly raped by two asylum seekers on Brighton beach thought she was going to be killed, a court was told.
Egyptians Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, and Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, and Iranian Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, allegedly targeted the woman, who cannot be identified, in a “cynical, predatory and callous” attack after she became separated from her friends while on a girls’ night out.
Prosecutors allege Mr Alshafe and Mr Ahmadi repeatedly raped the woman on Brighton beach in the early hours of Oct 4, 2025, while Mr Al-Danasurt filmed the incident, the court was told.
In a video interview recording played to jurors on Wednesday, the complainant was asked what she could recall from the night of the alleged attack.
Ibrahim Alshafe (left) and Karin Al-Danasurt (right) both deny raping the 33-year-old woman - Eddie Mitchell
She said she had been at a bar with friends until around 3am before going to a nightclub near the beach, the court heard.
“I remember taking drinks off this Asian man but then I remember being on my hands and knees in the toilet being sick...” the alleged victim said. “After that, I don’t remember anything.”
Prosecutors said the three defendants approached the complainant when she was “staggering in the street” alone.
“The first time I realised I was on the beach I could hear seagulls and I could hear men talking but foreign accents, not English,” jurors heard the alleged victim recall in the interview.
She said: “At first it was like I was coming round, and someone had their finger in my mouth and was rubbing their finger in my mouth, and it was almost like I kept falling back asleep.
“Every time I was there, but I wasn’t. It was such a weird experience... I’ve been drunk many times, I’ve never had this feeling before.
“I could hear a foreign accent saying ‘dirty b----, dirty b----’ and I was, like, ‘what?’, but I still wasn’t there at this point.”
The alleged victim began to cry in the recording when asked what her reaction was, and said she heard men laughing as she was assaulted.
She said: “I heard like five voices, that’s what scared me. There were quite a few voices, there was a whole group,” jurors heard.
She later 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 alleged victim said she remembered being bought drinks by a man she described as Asian and in his mid-30s or early-40s in the nightclub, the court heard.
At the time of the alleged offences, all three defendants knew each other and were residents at the Cisswood House Hotel in Lower Beeding, near Horsham, West Sussex, which was Home Office-approved accommodation for asylum seekers, jurors heard.
Mr Ahmadi, of Crewe, Cheshire, and Mr Alshafe, of Lower Beeding, have each denied two counts of raping the woman.
Mr Al-Danasurt, also of Lower Beeding, is jointly charged on all four rape counts as a secondary party “encouraging the rape by his actions at the scene, including filming it”, and has pleaded not guilty to all four.
He denies a fifth count of “sharing intimate films” without the complainant’s consent.
The charge relates to an allegation that Mr Al-Danasurt sent recordings of the alleged rapes to Ahmadi’s phone shortly after the incident.
