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A group of Muslim men who abducted and raped two teenage girls as part of their Eid celebrations laughed in court yesterday as they were jailed for a total of 38 years.The girls, aged 15 and 16, were lured miles from their home to a dingy hostel.

In a horrifying weekend-long ordeal, they were plied with alcohol and repeatedly raped by two men, Shamrez Rashid and Amar Hussain, before being offered to a number of others who also ‘used them for sex’.

The 16-year old was forced to have sex six times with four different men. The younger victim was raped by one man and then sexually assaulted by another.

One defendant, Rashid, 20, was said to have claimed the girls had enjoyed the sex, which he said had taken place as they celebrated the Muslim festival of Eid.‘It was Eid,’ he said. ‘We treated them as our guests. OK, so they gave us [sex] but we were buying them food and drink.

‘They could have anything they wanted. They enjoyed it.’

His accomplice Amar Hussain, 22, claimed the girls were ‘slags’.

But Judge Melbourne Inman QC said the girls had still been children at the time of the offences.


He said it was quite obvious they had been frightened of the men, but this had had ‘no effect at all’ on their attackers’ behavior.‘They were still children and still living with their families,’ Judge Inman said. ‘In a civilised society, such people should be helped. You all abused them.‘They were extremely vulnerable and you took advantage of that.’

The five defendants laughed and smirked as the horrifying details of their offences were described in court yesterday.

Rashid – who had already been found guilty of two rapes, an attempted rape, child abduction and an attempted sexual assault – grinned, laughed and made gun gestures in the dock. His supporters in the public gallery hurled abuse at the judge as he passed sentence later.

The court heard how Rashid and Hussain drove the girls from their home in Telford in Shropshire to a Birmingham probation hostel on the evening of Saturday November 28 2009.They took them to an unfamiliar environment so they ‘would be disorientated and reliant on them,’ prosecutors said.

After raping the girls, they ‘in effect offered them up to their friends, introducing a string of young men into the house’.

Over the following 36 hours, the girls were subjected to almost constant abuse, despite begging their attackers to stop.

The 16-year-old was left with bruising all over her face and neck after she was forced to perform a sex act on Hussain.

She was then forced to have sex with Rashid and a third man, Adil Saleem, while others watched.

The court heard how she held on to a doorframe to try to stop her attacker dragging her into a bedroom, but was pushed inside and the door locked behind her.She was warned that her attackers were in a gang known as the B9 Crew, and that ‘when someone pressed charges against them, they went to their mother’s house, put a gun to her face and broke her jaw’.The girls eventually ran from the hostel and called the emergency services from a payphone.

The trial at Birmingham Crown Court was the latest of several cases in which groups of men have been accused of sexually exploiting vulnerable girls.Hussain was found guilty of child abduction and three rapes and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Rashid received ten years for child abduction, two rapes, an attempted rape and attempted sexual assault.

Adil Saleem, 20, was given eight years for one count of rape. Jahbar Rafiq, 28, was handed eight years for rape and sexual assault and Amer Islam Choudhrey, 20, was given 15 months for child abduction and sexual assault.