Woman ‘raped’ by two asylum seekers on Brighton beach feared ‘she was going to die’

A woman who was allegedly raped on Brighton beach by two asylum seekers broke down in tears as she recalled ‘begging them to stop’.

Egyptian nationals Karin Al-Danasurt, 20, and Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, and Iranian national Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, allegedly targeted the woman, who cannot be identified, in a ‘cynical, predatory and callous’ attack after she became separated from her friends while on a girls’ night out.

Prosecutors allege Alshafe and Ahmadi repeatedly raped the woman on Brighton beach in the early hours of October 4 2025, while Al-Danasurt filmed the incident, a trial at Hove Crown Court has heard.

Being cross-examined from behind a screen on Wednesday afternoon, the complainant began to cry after she was asked by Jonathan Ray, defending Ahmadi, whether she had consensual sex with him.

She said it was not consensual, and added: ‘I was begging them to stop, and they wouldn’t stop, and I kept saying please stop … and they was laughing at me, and they thought it was funny.’

The alleged victim wept as she told jurors: ‘It wasn’t consensual at all, they (the defendants) ruined my life, they literally ruined my whole life, every day it bothers me, every day I can’t sleep.

‘Every day I do get to sleep, when I do close my eyes, if it’s not one of their faces it’s (the sound of) the seagulls or the waves, and they’re tormenting me.’

She added: ‘It wasn’t consensual, it was not consensual, they are evil and they have ruined my life.’

In a video interview played to jurors earlier, recorded on October 13 2025, the complainant was asked what she could recall from the night of the alleged attack.

She said she had been at a bar with friends until around 3am before going to a nightclub near the beach, the court heard.

‘I remember taking drinks off this Asian man but then I remember being on my hands and knees in the toilet being sick…’ the alleged victim said. ‘After that I don’t remember anything.’

Prosecutors say the three defendants approached the complainant when she was ‘staggering in the street’ alone.

In the recording, the alleged victim said when she regained consciousness, she was lying on the beach.

‘I closed my eyes because I thought ‘oh my god, they’re actually going to kill me’, I can hear all these voices and I can’t stop them’, jurors heard her say in the interview footage.

She said she told a man on top of her to ‘get off, get off’ while another was ‘spitting at me, he was like holding me down’.

At the time of the alleged offences, all three defendants knew each other and were residents at the Cisswood House Hotel in Lower Beeding, near Horsham, West Sussex, which was Home Office-approved accommodation for asylum seekers, jurors have heard.

Ahmadi, of Crewe in Cheshire, and Alshafe, of Lower Beeding, have each denied two counts of raping the woman.

Al-Danasurt, also of Lower Beeding, is jointly charged on all four rape counts as a secondary party ‘encouraging the rape by his actions at the scene, including filming it’, and has pleaded not guilty to all four.

He denies a fifth count of ‘sharing intimate films’ without the complainant’s consent.

The charge relates to an allegation that Al-Danasurt sent recordings of the alleged rapes to Ahmadi’s phone shortly after the incident.

The trial continues.

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