{"id":1015910,"date":"2026-06-09T18:52:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1015910\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T18:52:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:52:28","slug":"girl-repeatedly-raped-at-bristol-house-after-meeting-man-at-cabot-circus-court-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1015910\/","title":{"rendered":"Girl \u2018repeatedly raped\u2019 at Bristol house after meeting man at Cabot Circus, court told"},"content":{"rendered":"

The victim travelled in a taxi from her home in Somerset to Bristol after meeting one of the men at Cabot Circus days earlier, a court heardClaire Hayhurst and Rod Minchin, Press Association<\/strong> and Jamie Hawkins<\/strong><\/a> Deputy Head of News (South West) <\/p>\n

17:32, 09 Jun 2026<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

A general image of Cabot Circus, where she first had contact with one of the defendants(Image: Google Maps)<\/p>\n

A teenage girl was repeatedly raped and abused by three men and a boy at a Bristol house, a jury heard.<\/p>\n

Mehrab Safi, 21, Awal Ahmadzai and Salman Habibkheil, both 19, and a 16-year-old boy are accused of attacking the 17-year-old girl in November last year.<\/p>\n

Bristol Crown Court heard the girl had been Christmas shopping with a friend in the city\u2019s Cabot Circus shopping centre when they began talking to Safi, whom they had not met before, days earlier.<\/p>\n

Safi allegedly groomed the girl on Snapchat before arranging for a taxi to take her from her home in Somerset to Bristol in the early hours of November 30.<\/p>\n

At the property, the girl was provided with cigarettes and vodka before being allegedly raped by Safi and his co-defendants, who are all originally from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Prosecuting, Ed Hetherington told the jury: \u201cThe prosecution say that they sexually abused a young girl who Mr Safi had met and began grooming only days before the rapes took place.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn November 30 last year, Mr Safi and Mr Habibkheil arranged for her to be brought by taxi to meet them in Bristol in the early hours of a Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce she arrived, she was taken to a home in St Werburghs and she was very quickly expected to have sex with Mr Safi.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe didn\u2019t want to, not yet, but it happened anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Mr Safi had had sex with her, the other three men in the house took it in turns to get her alone in a bedroom or in a bed and to have sex with her against her wishes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile all of this was going on, she was plied with alcohol and cigarettes to secure her compliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was isolated in an unfamiliar city miles from home, in the dead of night, with a house full of men she didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe say she was raped and she was abused repeatedly over a period of several hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Hetherington said the incident ended when the girl\u2019s mother contacted police, and the girl later gave officers a full account of what she said happened.<\/p>\n

The jury of five men and seven women heard that the girl, who was shopping with a friend, had given Safi her phone number after meeting him at the shopping centre in the city on November 25.<\/p>\n

He later asked her to add him on the social media platform Snapchat, requesting nude photographs of her on November 28, the court heard.<\/p>\n

In the early hours of November 30, the girl got into a taxi from her home in Somerset and travelled to Bristol to meet Safi.<\/p>\n

She was initially dropped off in an industrial area, where Safi was waiting with Habibkheil, before they got into another taxi, which took them to a house in the St Werburghs area.<\/p>\n

Mr Hetherington said CCTV footage showed the girl and Safi holding hands as they walked down the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt, she thought she was visiting her new boyfriend or potential new boyfriend,\u201d he told the jury.<\/p>\n

After arriving at the house, the girl was told to go to his bedroom upstairs.<\/p>\n

Safi told the girl he wanted to have sex with her, which she was expecting and replied that she would but not yet, Mr Hetherington added.<\/p>\n

Safi allegedly asked the girl to remove her clothing six to seven times, insisting they would not have sex, but then is said to have raped her when she did so.<\/p>\n

The girl then dressed and was brought downstairs where the other defendants were playing a video game, the court heard.<\/p>\n

Safi, Ahmadzai and Habibkheil then fled the UK in the back of a lorry three days after the alleged incident, the jury heard.<\/p>\n

The men were discovered by the French authorities in Calais after fleeing the house as police arrived, Mr Hetherington said.<\/p>\n

He said mobile phone footage recovered from Safi\u2019s phone showed the three defendants in the back of the lorry with Habibkheil making hand gestures to the camera and laughing.<\/p>\n

“We suggest they are celebrating because they think they have got away with it”, he said.<\/p>\n

Safi, of St Werburghs, Bristol, denies one count of human trafficking and two charges of rape.<\/p>\n

Habibkheil, of Lockleaze, Bristol, denies one count of human trafficking and one charge of rape.<\/p>\n

Ahmadzai, of Redcliffe, Bristol, denies one charge of rape and one of assault by penetration.<\/p>\n

The 16-year-old boy also denies one charge of rape.<\/p>\n

Their trial, in front of Judge Michael Cullum, is expected to last up to three weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The victim travelled in a taxi from her home in Somerset to Bristol after meeting one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1015911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8818],"tags":[2881,381,748,15124,188,393,4884,20075,16,15],"class_list":["post-1015910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bristol","tag-afghanistan","tag-bristol","tag-britain","tag-cabot-circus","tag-crime","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-lockleaze","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116721665013591434","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1015911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}