Asylum seeker Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, arrived in the UK last year before raping the teenager in July. Anti-immigration protests subsequently rocked the country.

An Afghan national was sentenced on Friday to 15 years in prison in the United Kingdom for abducting, raping a 12-year-old girl and filming the act, a case that sparked anti-immigration protests and controversy after police did not immediately clarify his asylum seeker status.

Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, was found guilty by Warwick Crown Court of raping a child under the age of 13 in Nuneaton, central England, last July. He had already pleaded guilty to this charge during the trial and was also found guilty of child abduction, sexual assault, and recording an obscene video. He had filmed himself raping the young victim.

Expulsion

Judge Kristina Montgomery stated that the victim had told Ahmad Mulakhil she was 19, but that "there was no doubt you knew she was under 16." Adding that the victim continued to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and health problems since the assault, the judge handed down a 15-year prison sentence, a conviction which, she clarified, "automatically entails" her "deportation" from the country.

During the trial, the defendant's lawyer, who had arrived in the UK aboard a small boat four months before the events of last July, stated that the accused had fled Afghanistan. "He left Afghanistan at the age of 22 after spending 12 years in school until he was 18. He intended to go to university to study economics, but for various reasons, he and his family became targets of the Taliban, and that is why he ultimately fled the country," Marcus Harry argued.

Anti-immigration activists have seized upon this case, along with others involving asylum seekers—most often young men, particularly those housed in hotels—to claim they pose a threat to local communities. Migrant advocacy groups, on the other hand, accuse the local far right and certain opportunistic politicians of exploiting these incidents to inflame tensions within British society.