A mentally ill asylum seeker lay in wait for a lone woman before slashing her 30 times with a broken bottle.

Ibrahim Albashir, 34, launched the frenzied attack on his victim, now 32, as she walked home from a meal with friends in March 2024.

On Tuesday, as he was jailed for 25 years, Leeds Crown Court heard of the shocking failures on both sides of the Channel that left Albashir able to travel to Britain.

After leaving Sudan at the age of 25, Albashir travelled via Libya to Italy and then France, the court heard.

During a year spent in France, he started smoking cannabis and drinking alcohol and was later detained in a French mental health unit for six months where he was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia.

When he was discharged with anti-psychotic medication, Albashir made his way to Paris but stopped taking the medication. 

His asylum claim was later rejected in France.

Undeterred, with the help of ‘people smugglers’, Albashir made his way to Calais and then on to Britain, initially to a hostel in Birmingham.

There, he sexually assaulted a member of staff when she refused his offer to come up to his room for sex, the court heard.

He also lived in Luton, Coventry, Birmingham and Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.

Albashir only found himself in Leeds in March 2024 after he was kicked off a train from Manchester to York for not having a ticket.

Ibrahim Albashir, 34, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison alongside a hospital order, meaning he will serve the rest of his sentence in custody if he ever recovers

On March 15 2024 Albashir was subject to a stop and search by police in the Woodhouse area of Leeds after he was seen with his trousers around his ankles.

The officer observed him to be ‘in a trance-like state’ and ‘possibly under the influence drugs,’ the court heard.

No drugs were found and no further action was taken.

At around 9pm on March 17 2024, Albashir targeted his lone female victim outside the Original Oak pub in Headingley, Leeds.

The attack was only stopped when members of the public heard her ‘blood-curdling screams’ and punched Albashir temporarily unconscious.

Judge Robin Mairs, sentencing Albashir after he admitted attempted murder in March on the first day of a planned trial, said there was a ‘sexual element’ to the frenzied stabbing to her chest and neck.

Miraculously, the woman’s stab wounds were relatively minor, but the ‘mental scars are serious and lasting’, the judge said.

In a personal statement, the victim said the scar on her chest is visible and the thought of walking past the site of the attempted murder ‘fills me with dread’.

‘Every time someone asks about the scar I have to relive the worst day of my life,’ she said.

‘I live my life feeling anxious, worried and scared about something like this happening again.

‘The physical injuries may be minor, my mental injuries are scars that will stay with me forever.’

Police and medical staff described Albashir as appearing ‘out of it’ following the attack and he appeared to be intoxicated with either drink of drugs or both, prosector Brian Russell said.

Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Lucy Bacon, who has been treating Albashir for his catatonic schizophrenia said his mental condition leaves him sexually disinhibited.

She told the court he has tried to isolate himself with female members nursing staff at Guild Lodge secure mental unit, in Lancashire.

Albashir was sentenced on Tuesday at Leeds Crown Court via video link from a secure psychiatric hospital

Dr Bacon said in January this year, he exposed his penis to a female member of staff and asked her to perform a sex act on him.

During his time in Guild Lodge he has been assessed by doctors and has failed to give any motive for the Leeds attempted murder, claiming he does not recall attacking the woman.

But the doctor has found him ‘cagey… inconsistent’ and ‘evasive’ when questioned about his drug taking, or memory of the attack in Headingley.

Addressing Albashir, who appeared from a secure mental health unit via video link with the help of an Arabic interpreter, Judge Mairs said: ‘I do not accept your self-reporting of amnesia at the time of the offence.

‘You chose a lone female to attack. It would appear from CCTV footage that you laid in wait.

‘I feel the common sense conclusion is that there was a sexual element to the attack.

‘This was not, in my view, random.’

Judge Mairs added that Albashir’s mental health condition was ‘not the sole cause of your offending.’

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison along with an indefinite hospital order.

Judge Robin Mairs explained that this means he will be detained indefinitely in a secure mental hospital and, if he ever recovers, he will be transferred to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.