Asylum seeker who raped vulnerable teen is jailed for nine years

Predator faces deportation despite his Taliban claims

- BY RICHARD ELIAS

AN Afghan asylum seeker who claimed he was once a prisoner of the Taliban is facing deportation to his homeland after being convicted of raping a vulnerable teenage girl.

Rapualla Ahmadze was yesterday jailed for nine years.

Judge Thomas Welsh KC, sitting at the High Court in Edinburgh, told the 21-year-old: “You continued to deny your guilt. You were unanimously disbelieved by the jury in relation to your defence of consent.

“You were convicted by the jury on the basis that you acted in a predatory manner and took advantage of a vulnerable teenager, who was unknown to you, and you raped her in a shocking, violent rape on rough ground. What happened to her must have been a horrific ordeal.”

The judge, who also placed the defendant on the Sex Offenders’ Register indefinitely. added that the victim's impact statement revealed the “shocking, overwhelming impact your violent, brutal abuse has had on your innocent victim”.