Five members of a British Asian pedophile gang were jailed for life on Thursday for grooming vulnerable underage girls for sex.
The gang’s five-month trial heard that they exploited at least six troubled girls as young as 11 in the English city of Oxford, plying them with drugs before forcing them to perform sex acts.
Brothers Akhtar and Anjum Dogar were handed life terms by a judge at London’s Old Bailey court along with Kamar Jamil and brothers Mohammed and Bassam Karrar.
Two more defendants, Assad Hussain and Zeeshan Ahmed, were jailed for seven years each.
Four of the victims, who were abused between 2004 and last year, had lived in state-run children’s homes.
The trial heard that the girls, aged between 11 and 15 at the time of the abuse, were repeatedly and violently raped, beaten and in one case forced to have an abortion at the age of 12.
They were sometimes driven across the country to have sex with other men. Several were gang-raped.
The men — who are all of Pakistani origin except the North African Karrar brothers — were found guilty last month of a catalog of crimes including rape, trafficking and organizing prostitution.
Judge Peter Rook told the Dogar brothers they had committed “extremely grave crimes” as he jailed them for a minimum of 17 years each.
“You targeted the young girls because they were vulnerable, underage and out of control,” he said.
“You would build up their trust and provide them with drink, drugs and the attention which they craved. From a misguided loyalty to you, they were reluctant to tell the authorities what was happening to them,” he said.
The court heard of the lasting psychological scars inflicted on the girls, one of whom had considered suicide.
One girl told a friend that she submitted to the abuse because she just wanted to be loved.
The family of one victim said in a statement on Thursday that the men “took her from us and we will never get those lost years back.”
Police and social services were forced to apologize after missing several chances to catch the gang.
The trial followed the jailing last year of nine Asian men who had similarly abused vulnerable girls in Rochdale, northwest England.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number