September 2010 Illegal immigrant who fled the Taliban jailed for sex act with girl (14) AN ILLEGAL immigrant from Afghanistan who fled his homeland over pressure to join the Taliban has been jailed for four years after admitting sexual activity with an underage girl in the back of a North Warwickshire shop. Rahis Ahamdzai (28) of no fixed address, denied a charge of raping the 14-year-old and an alternative offence of sexual activity with a child – but changed his plea on the second charge to “guilty” on the day of his trial at Warwick Crown Court. Prosecutor Francis Laird, who accepted that plea, said Ahamdzai was an Afghan national here illegally. Ahamdzai claimed he had been in this country for just two or three weeks before the offence in February, but Mr Laird pointed out that was “probably not true”. At the time Ahamdzai was working on a casual basis at the village shop where the owner said he had employed him on since October. In February, Ahamdzai was working in the shop during the evening, but was outside having a cigarette when the 14-year-old girl and a friend turned up and he engaged them in conversation, during which he asked their ages. He invited them to the rear of the shop, but the girl’s friend began to feel uncomfortable about being there and made an excuse to return to the front. Mr Laird said it was “not precisely clear” what then went on when Ahamdzai and the girl were alone. “The prosecution do not present the case in the way she described it to the police, but the two clearly engaged in sexual intercourse standing up against a wall. “They may have been disturbed by a call from a friend of the defendant. “The girl then said she had to go, and went to the front of the shop where she met her friend, who described her as tearful, and she asked her what had happened.” The girl only said he had kissed her neck, but over the following few days she told her friend what had gone on and went to a clinic which advises about sexual matters and made a complaint of rape. When Ahamdzai was arrested and interviewed with the assistance of an interpreter, he insisted there had not been any sexual contact. And even after the girl had picked him out in an identity procedure and his DNA had been found on the pyjamas she had worn at home that night, he continued to deny it. Mr Laird added that Ahamdzai had not used any contraception, and the girl had had an anxious time worrying whether she might have become pregnant. John Donnolly, defending, pointed out that it had not been “a continual or engineered meeting” with the girl, and there was no suggestion of Ahamdzai grooming her. He said Ahamdzai had arrived in the UK only a few weeks prior to the incident, having fled his homeland because of pressures on him to join the Taliban. And since arriving he had worked in a variety of locations delivering leaflets and working in shops. Jailing Ahamdzai and ordering him to register as a sex offender for life, Judge Marten Coated said: “Only in very recent days have you acknowledged you had intercourse with her, but your plea has prevented that girl having to come to court to speak about what happened.”