9 June 2026
Girl was repeatedly raped by four Afghan nationals after being groomed on Snapchat, lured to a house and plied with vodka and cigarettes, a court has heard.
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 at the property in Bristol in November last year.
The three men then fled the country in the back of a lorry and were later discovered by French authorities in Calais.
Bristol Crown Court heard how several days before the attack, the girl had been Christmas shopping with a friend in the city’s Cabot Circus shopping centre when they began talking to Safi.
He allegedly groomed the girl on Snapchat and asked her for nude images.
Two days later, in the early hours of November 30, he arranged for a taxi to pick her up from her home in Somerset and take her to an industrial estate in Bristol.
She was met by Safi and Habibkheil and taken to the property, provided with cigarettes and vodka and allegedly raped by Safi and his co-defendants.
Prosecuting, Ed Hetherington told the jury: ‘The prosecution say that they sexually abused a young girl who Mr Safi had met and began grooming only days before the rapes took place.
‘On 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.
The court heard heard how several days before the attack, the girl had been Christmas shopping with a friend in the city’s Cabot Circus shopping centre (pictured) when they began talking to Safi
The court heard heard how several days before the attack, the girl had been Christmas shopping with a friend in the city’s Cabot Circus shopping centre (pictured) when they began talking to Safi
‘Once she arrived, she was taken to a home in St Werburghs and she was very quickly expected to have sex with Mr Safi.
‘She didn’t want to, not yet, but it happened anyway.
‘After 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.
‘While all of this was going on, she was plied with alcohol and cigarettes to secure her compliance.
‘She was alone. She was isolated in an unfamiliar city miles from home, in the dead of night, with a house full of men she didn’t know.
‘We say she was raped and she was abused repeatedly over a period of several hours.’
Mr Hetherington said the incident ended when the girl’s mother contacted police, with the girl later giving a full account to officers of what she said happened.
The jury of five men and seven women heard the girl, who was shopping with a friend, had given Safi her phone number after meeting him at a shopping centre in the city on November 25.
Turning to their contact on Snapchat, Mr Hetherington said: ‘It is a very sad indictment of what digital technology has done to dating life with young people that she regarded that request as entirely normal.
‘She complied and she sent him photographs of herself in various states of undress.
The defendants, who are being tried at Bristol Crown Court deny the charges against them
‘She was perfectly willing to so, despite him being someone she barely knew and she said that was unexceptional.’
Mr Hetherington said CCTV footage showed the girl and Safi holding hands as they walked down the road.
‘There’s no doubt, she thought she was visiting her new boyfriend or potential new boyfriend,’ he told the jury.
After arriving at the house, the girl was told to go to his bedroom upstairs.
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.
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.
The girl then dressed and was brought downstairs where the other defendants were playing a video game.
She told police that following the four attacks, she said she wanted to leave the house.
‘I just wanted to go home, I didn’t feel safe, I just wanted to go home,’ she told officers.
Safi, Habibkheil and Ahmadzai were then found in Calais after they fled the UK in the wake of the attack.
Bristol Crown Court heard the three Afghans left the UK on December 3 last year – three days after they and a 16-year-old boy attacked a 17-year-old girl.
The jury was told police had traced the girl to a house in the St Werberghs area of Bristol and arrested the 16-year-old defendant when he answered the door to the property.
Edd Hetherington, prosecuting, said the three older co-accused fled the house as the police arrived and in the aftermath travelled to both Birmingham and London.
Mobile phone analysis showed they had also searched for news items in Bristol and for information about sexual activity with a teenage girl.
‘At this point the three defendants are still at large giving the clearest possible indication that they are aware that they have done something very seriously wrong indeed,’ Mr Hetherington said.
‘You might have heard reports from time to time about people concealing themselves in the back of a lorry and crossing the Channel.
‘In a deeply unusual turn of events, the defendants Safi, Habibkheil and Ahmadzai, chose to use this mode of transportation to leave the UK rather than enter.
‘Unfortunately for them, they were discovered by the French police in Calais at about 9pm on December 3.
‘They were immediately returned to the UK under what is called the Gentleman’s Agreement between the relevant authorities.
‘By the early hours of December 4, the three of them were returned to the custody of the English police.’
Mr Hetherington said the three defendants did not have any travel documents or identification and had given false names to the French authorities.
‘Their real names were checked on the police systems and they were arrested on suspicion of rape,’ he added.
Mobile phone footage recovered from Safi’s phone showed the three defendants in the back of the lorry with Habibkheil making hand gestures to the camera and laughing.
‘It is a direct insight into the mood of the three, we suggest, as they travel out of the UK and into France,’ Mr Hetherington said.
‘The prosecution says Safi is the one who in the course of this journey takes his phone out and starts filming.
‘Mr Habibkheil is the man in the corner gesturing and laughing and Mr Ahmadzai is having a lie down on wherever it is that’s being transported legitimately in the back of that lorry.
‘We suggest they are celebrating because they think they have got away with it.’
Safi, of St Werburghs, Bristol, denies one count of human trafficking and two charges of rape.
Habibkheil, of Lockleaze, Bristol, denies one count of human trafficking and one charge of rape.
Ahmadzai, of Redcliffe, Bristol, denies one charge of rape and one of assault by penetration.
The 16-year-old boy also denies one charge of rape.
Their trial, in front of Judge Michael Cullum, is expected to last up to three weeks.