By Stanley Murphy-Johns, Anahita Hossein-Pour, Ellie Crabbe and Flora Thompson, Press Association
An asylum-seeker who filmed a woman being raped on Brighton beach was convicted of murder in Egypt, according to prosecutors.
Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, was found guilty of four counts of rape as a secondary party by encouraging and filming the brutal attack in October last year.
The Egyptian national was convicted after a trial at Hove Crown Court alongside Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, and Iranian Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, who were each found guilty of two counts of rape.
The trio all arrived in Britain after crossing the Channel by boat and have decisions pending on asylum claim appeals.
Details of Al-Danasurt’s past crimes emerged at a plea hearing in November last year but the judge withdrew the evidence from the case after his defence team contested the conviction.
At the time, prosecutors told the court that Al-Danasurt had been convicted of murder in his absence in Egypt, adding that the basis of his asylum claim was that he fled the country to “evade a lengthy custodial sentence”.
But his defence barrister said it was in fact his brother who had the conviction for murder, not him.
They added that the UK government’s assessment of Egypt is that a person who is openly critical of the government is likely to be at risk of serious harm.
As a result, the evidence was not heard by jurors during the trial because of the dispute.
Today (Thursday 23 April), Hanna Llewellyn-Waters, prosecuting, told the court that there were “ongoing inquiries at a very senior level” about Al-Danasurt’s crimes abroad.
She added that he had been given a caution in the UK for criminal damage in April last year but said that she was “not in a position” to provide any more detail.
She also told Judge Christine Henson that it was “not a foregone conclusion that these defendants will be deported”, adding “I am not the Home Office” when asked about reports to determine whether the rapists met the threshold for extended sentences.
But after the verdicts, the Border Security and Asylum Minister Alex Norris said: “Once sentencing has taken place, we will move to deport them off British soil.”
At the time of the attack, all three defendants knew each other and were living at the Cisswood House hotel, Home Office-approved hotel accommodation for asylum seekers in Lower Beeding, near Horsham.
The trial was told that Ahmadi and Alshafe met each other in France and crossed the English Channel on the same boatd, arriving in the UK on Thursday 19 June 2025.
Jurors were told that Al-Danasurt arrived in the country on Saturday 21 September 2024 but were not told how he came to be in the country.
The jury was also told that Alshafe’s asylum application had been refused on Friday 3 October but he told the court that he did not know about the update to his case before going to Brighton that night.
Giving evidence, he said that he was from the port city of Alexandria, in Egypt, where he lived with his parents and two sisters.
He left school without formal academic qualifications and worked as a carpenter and served as a military conscript for three years.
He said that he wanted to make a better future for himself. Asked if his plan was to come to the UK to do that, he said: “Yes.”
Al-Danasurt was born in Egypt and went to school there until around the age of 11 and left his home country to come to the UK in June 2022.
Ahmadi told jurors that he left Iran because he was working for a Kurdish opposition party and was discovered by security police who went to look for him at his home and asked his mother where he was.
Speaking through a Kurdish Sorani interpreter, he said: “If I hadn’t left, I would have been arrested and been killed.”
Ahmadi had not been to school and had received education only since he had been in prison, the court was told.
His father died when he was 13 and he worked as a labourer and farmer in Iran.
Britain has prison transfer agreements with more than 110 countries. These permit foreign prisoners to serve their sentences in their home countries but Iran is not one of those countries.
There is an agreement with Egypt but it is voluntary. A prisoner must agree to the move before being transferred, as must both states.
An early removal scheme (ERS) allows eligible foreign prisoners, who are serving determinate sentences, to be deported from the UK before having served their full sentence.
Under current law, most foreign nationals in jail can be considered for removal after serving 30 per cent of their custodial sentence.
Once they are removed under the early removal scheme, they are not imprisoned in their home country but are banned from returning to the UK. If they returned, they would have to serve the rest of their sentence from before they were deported.
Border Security and Asylum Minister Alex Norris said: “My thoughts are first and foremost with the victim of this appalling crime, and with all those who have been affected by it.
“What she endured is deeply disturbing, and I commend her bravery in coming forward and reporting these vile individuals. I share the public’s outrage in their horrendous actions.
“The perpetrators have now been rightly convicted, and justice has been delivered by the courts. Once sentencing has taken place, we will move to deport them off British soil.”
The Egyptian authorities have been contacted for comment.