Photo credit: The Times
Migrants are trying to cut their prison sentences by claiming post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is behind their sexual crimes.
The Mail reports that lawyers have won their clients reduced jail terms after emphasizing the trauma experienced in their home countries.
A case saw an Egyptian sex offender who raped a woman in Hyde Park handed a shorter sentence after a psychiatric report suggested he had PTSD.
Abdelrahmen Adnan Abouelela was set to be handed the maximum term for his sentencing bracket. But his term was reduced to eight and a half years, just about the starting term of eight years.
He told the court that he struggled with “borderline emotionally unstable personality disorder and PTSD as a result of experiences in Egypt.
Judge Gregory Pderrins, in turn, sliced his sentence and said: “I then make a reduction to take account of your lack of previous convictions whilst in this country and what I have read about you in the psychiatric report.”
But the Daily Mail later reported that the convict was a convicted Islamic terrorist, found guilty in his absence of being part of a bomb-making cell in Egypt and given a seven-year jail sentence on May 5, 2015.
Abouelela, a member of the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement, escaped from Egypt and claimed asylum when he arrived in the UK in April 2023. He was housed in taxpayer-funded hotel accommodation while his application was being processed.
After his secret was exposed, his case was relisted for sentencing, but the prosecution could not submit any evidence of his previous conviction.
In November 2024, Hassan Abou Hayleh was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in Weymouth, Dorset, in 2022.
The refugee was jailed for almost three years afyer a judge rejected his claims that sending him to prison could breach his human rights.
Bournemouth Crown Court heard Hayleh sought asylum in the UK in 2018 after fleeing Syria.
He suffered from PTSD after being held in prison there and was tortured under the regime of former president Bashar al-Assad.
He was granted leave to remain in the UK and settled in Weymouth with his wife.
His defence counsel, Graham Gilbert, sought to claim that sending him to prison could violate his human rights.
But Judge Pawson dismissed the arguments and described Haylen’s actions as “chilling”..
