An asylum seeker allegedly raped a 12-year-old girl, took indecent photographs, and told her he would murder her family shortly after “targeting” her at a children’s play park in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, a court has heard.
Mohammad Kabir, 24, and Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, appeared at Warwick Crown Court this week for the opening days of a trial over the alleged daylight rape of a child on a public street on 22 July 2025, which triggered protests in the local area of Nuneaton.
Warwickshire Police added more charges shortly before the first court date this week, reflecting additional evidence allegedly obtained from Mulakhil’s mobile phone. Kabir is accused of intentional strangulation, committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual offence, and attempting to take a child. Mulakhil has been charged with three counts of rape of a female child under 13, abducting a child, two counts of sexual assault and a count of taking indecent photos of a child.
Mulakhil has already admitted one count of “oral rape” but denies the other charges.
On Thursday, the jury was played a recording of the testimony of the 12-year-old alleged victim. The Times of London reports she told officers:
…They were asking my age. I said I was 12. They said they didn’t care.
…I was walking and saw him. He spoke to me, and said come with me, so I went with him… We got behind a shed thing. He was saying that he liked me. I said, ‘I don’t like you. I’m young. I’m a kid’. He had a translator on his phone. He was acting weird. He put his hands on me and I told him to stop.
…He was trying to strip my clothes off. He said nothing. He was laughing.
…He was saying he was going to kill my family. I was scared. He took photos. It felt weird. Why was he taking pictures of that?
The defence counter-claimed in court that the child did not tell Mulakhil that she was 12, but rather pretended to be 19 years old. Even so, the prosecution said this claim would have been obviously untrue, and it was immediately clear to the men in the summer daylight that the physically immature child was underage.
The BBC reports that on the first day of the trial, the jury heard the girl had said “after he strangled me I ran off” and when she was allegedly strangled by Kabir, she felt as if “I was going to die because I couldn’t breathe”. It is stated the court heard how the men “targeted” the 12-year-old after they saw her playing on the swings at a park in Nuneaton, there was an attempt to persuade the girl to go with the men, but ultimately she was grabbed by the neck and pulled.
The rape was “forced”, and she was “smacked and pulled”, the court heard. Police said forensics discovered Mulakhil’s DNA on the girl’s skin and inside her shorts. The prosecution said: “He talked to her and led her away to a secluded cul-de-sac, Cheverel Place, where he raped her, sexually assaulted her and took indecent images of her.”
Police said they found indecent images of the 12-year-old girl on Mulakhil’s mobile phone.
On Friday, the court heard a second day of evidence. The BBC states the jury heard the testimony of witnesses — who can’t be named for legal reasons — who discovered the girl wandering the streets dazed after the alleged assaults. The first witness told the court that when she met the girl, she’d told her “something happened to me”.
The witness continued: “I asked her if she was hurt and she said, ‘he raped me’. She was saying that her back was hurting because they ragged her around. She was very scared. She said ‘he’s coming for me’ – she knew he was still in the park, which was across the road.”
The girl is also said to have told the witness that one of the men had told her to meet him at the same park again the following evening and that the man “wanted to get her in a black BMW and he was going to take her to Birmingham and London and rape her again”.
The unnamed witness said: “You could see she was petrified, frantic, and she was crying. She was looking over her shoulder. She was mumbling to herself.”
The trial continues.
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