Four Afghans who fled the UK in the back of a lorry after gang-raping a teenage girl they groomed have been jailed.

Mehrab Safi, 21, Salman Habibkheil and Awal Ahmadzai, both 19, and a boy, 17, who cannot be named, attacked the 17-year-old girl at a house in Bristol in November last year.

She told a court how she ‘wanted to go home’, but had been plied with vodka and cigarettes before the attack.

Safi, Ahmadzai and Habibkheil then fled the UK in December – filming themselves ‘celebrating’ their escape in the back of a lorry – and were later discovered by French authorities in Calais.

After being returned to the UK, the men were convicted of offences including rape following a trial at Bristol Crown Court earlier this year. 

Judge Michael Cullum today jailed Safi, who was convicted of two counts of rape and one of human trafficking, for 15 years.

Habibkheil was sentenced to nine years in detention for one count of rape and one of human trafficking, while Ahmadzai was sentenced to nine years in detention for one count of rape and one of sexual assault.

The 17-year-old defendant, who cannot be identified because of his age, was sentenced to three years in detention for one count of rape.

The victim met Safi when she went Christmas shopping with a friend in Bristol city centre.

Passing sentence, the judge said: ‘She clearly didn’t know Bristol well and seemed keen to drink alcohol, potentially with people unknown to her.

‘She would have looked vulnerable from the beginning and I have no doubt that that was her attraction, in part, to you Safi.’

Safi tried to lure both girls to his property by offering drugs and a place to charge their phones, but they declined and went home instead.

He and the victim nonetheless exchanged social media details and Safi initiated an ‘intense exchange’ of messages on Snapchat, where he asked her for nude photos.

Awal Ahmadzai (left), Salman Habibkheil (centre), both 19, Mehrab Safi, 21, (right) and a boy, 17, who cannot be named, attacked a 17-year-old girl at a house in Bristol in November last year

Just four days later on November 30, the girl’s mother went out for the evening and Safi suggested she should travel to Bristol.

Safi, along with Habibkheil, arranged a taxi to collect her from her home in Somerset and bring her to the city.

She was then taken to Safi’s house, where the men gave her enough alcohol to make her drunk so then each of them could rape her.

The victim was sexually assaulted and raped by the four men over several hours.

‘Having been trafficked for the purpose of committing a sexual offence, she was raped five times and was subjected to a penetrative sexual assault by Ahmadzai,’ the judge said.

‘The cumulative trauma of these offences will undoubtedly live with her forever and is unimaginable.’

He continued: ‘The victim was obviously vulnerable and that’s why you all preyed on her.’

The judge said the girl had been provided with alcohol and cigarettes, which had the effect of ‘grooming her and trapping her, though not physically’.

She was ‘plied with drink until very significantly affected’, with the defendants getting her drunk to increase her vulnerability and the prospect she ‘would not or could not resist’, he added.

Being raped by multiple men, one after another, left her ‘broken beyond resistance’, the judge said.

During the trial, jurors watched a video of the victim in a police interview following the attack.

The footage showed she had told Safi she did not want to have sex with him at that point, but he went on to rape her anyway.

Habibkheil then raped her before Ahmadzai and the 17-year-old boy did the same.

She told police: ‘I just wanted to go home. I didn’t feel safe. I just wanted to go home. I didn’t like it. I just wanted to be at home.’

The girl said she had been asleep during two of the alleged rapes and while being sexually assaulted.

Jurors heard how the girl’s mother raised the alarm when she was not at home, with police tracing her to a house in the St Werburghs area of Bristol.

Officers arrested the teenage boy when he answered the door to the property, while the three older men fled as police arrived.

Addressing the defendants, the judge described how they had suffered trauma but this did not excuse what they had caused to the victim in the case.

‘Each of the four reports gives some details as to the exact causes of the trauma that you each have suffered in relation to fleeing Afghanistan and travelling to the UK,’ he said.

‘I’m not going to repeat the detail in these sentencing remarks but I do take it into account.’

 Edd Hetherington, prosecuting, read a victim personal statement from the girl and summarised a statement made by her mother.

The girl described how she was “a different person” following the attacks, and had stopped going out by herself.

“Generally, my brain keeps blocking out the trauma that happened to me but when I am feeling low emotionally it all comes back and makes me feel even worse,” she said.

“Going through the court process has made it so much worse again, as listening to it all again from the lawyers kept me re-living everything that happened to me.

“I had to take breaks to cry, it was all really traumatic as my brain could not block it all out as it usually does.”

The girl said she had planned to go to college and work in a nursery with children, but her anxiety is now so bad she has had to “put a hold on to that dream”.

She told the court she had been “glad and relieved” when the defendants were convicted, as she had been “scared that they would get away with what they have done”.

Her mother said the girl was “anxious of anyone who looks similar to the defendants” and had lost trust in strangers.