‘Carried her away’: Migrant staying in London asylum hotel charged with abducting and raping 15-year-old

Sri Lankan national Yashin Himasara, 20, is accused of beating and strangling the girl after he “carried her away against her will” in Feltham on November 1, UK media reports.

Himasara, who denies the charges, had been living in the three-star St Giles Hotel near Heathrow.

He appeared at Isleworth Crown Court via video-link from HMP Wormwood Scrubs, speaking to confirm his name and date of birth aided by a Sinhala interpreter.

Himasara denied one count of kidnapping, one count of rape, one count of assault by penetration, one count of assault by beating, one count of sexual activity with a child and two counts of intentional strangulation, according to the report.

His defence lawyer, Bozzie Sheffi, told the court Himasara struggles to speak English and would need the assistance of an interpreter at trial.

Himasara was remanded in custody ahead of his trial on April 27 next year.

“If you do not attend your trial, it will go ahead without you and you won’t be able to tell the jury your side of the story,” Judge Kwame Inyundo told the defendant.

“On top of that, you may be committing a separate offence.”

The judge asked if Himasara understood the allegations, to which he responded, “Yes.”

The Home Office refused to comment on Himasara’s asylum status to The Daily Mail.

“We are bearing down on foreign criminals and illegal migrants who exploit our laws by making vexatious human rights claims that ground flights,” a spokesperson said.

“As well as introducing the most significant reforms to tackle illegal migration in modern times, we are scaling up removals of people with no right to be here — with nearly 50,000 already removed. This action will make our country and its citizens safer, bringing an end to abuse of our legal system and securing Britain’s borders.”

St Giles Hotel is one of around 200 hotels being used by the British government to house nearly 36,000 asylum seekers at a cost of £5.77 million ($11.6 million) per day, or £2.1 billion ($4.22 billion) last financial year.

It’s the latest in a series of shocking alleged sexual assaults and other crimes linked to residents of asylum hotels, and migrants more broadly, which have sparked growing public outrage and protests in the UK.

On Thursday, a failed asylum seeker from Trinidad was found guilty of raping a woman in her own home after turning up drunk at her door following a night out.

Chret Callender, 28, had been living at the Britannia Hotel in Bournemouth, Dorset, one of three in the city taken over by the Home Office.

His victim managed to record the rape on her phone, with harrowing audio clips played to the jury of the woman crying and telling Callender “please stop”.

On Monday, two 17-year-old Afghan refugees were jailed for the horrific rape of a 15-year-old girl at a park in central England, which the victim also managed to record in footage so horrific the defence lawyers warned it could spark riots.

A day earlier, a 28-year-old Afghan national was charged with raping two 14-year-old girls at a flat in Manchester in the UK.

In August, a 38-year-old Ethiopian asylum seeker was jailed for the assault of a 14-year-old girl and a woman in Epping.

Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu had been living in the Bell Hotel in Epping, which became the focus of protests earlier this year.

Last week, Muhammad Sheikhi, 22, appeared in court charged with two sexual assaults while staying at the Cladhan Hotel in the Scottish town of Falkirk.

The same hotel had previously also been the focus of anti-migrant protests after Afghan asylum seeker Sadeq Nikzad, 29, was convicted in March of raping a 15-year-old girl in the town centre in October 2023.

In August, Syrian national Qais Al-Aswad, 26, who was living at an asylum hotel in Surrey, was convicted of sexually assaulting three women as he cycled past them in May and June.

Al-Aswad avoided jail for the attacks and was given a six-month suspended sentence. He claimed he was “unfamiliar with UK laws regarding physical contact”.

Last June, illegal immigrant Khaliz Ali Alshimery, 46, was jailed for 12 years for the harrowing rape of a 20-year-old woman in an Oxford churchyard in November 2023.

Sudanese refugee Ayman Adam, 25, strangled and tried to rape a 19-year-old woman after following her into the female toilets in a nightclub in Wakefield in November 2023.

Adam, who was living at the nearby four-star Cedar Court Hotel, was jailed for seven years.

An investigation by The Sun earlier this year found 339 charges in the prior six months linked to residents of asylum hotels.

The Mail on Sunday identified 708 charges, including multiple cases of rape, sexual assault, violence, theft and arson.

Foreign nationals are responsible for more than one quarter of sexual assaults on women successfully prosecuted in the UK, official figures revealed earlier this year.

Data from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), obtained under freedom-of-information laws, showed 26 per cent of the 1453 sexual assault convictions in 2024 were of foreign nationals, The Telegraph reported.

Indians accounted for the highest number of sexual assaults on women by foreign nationality, followed by Romanians, Poles, Pakistanis and Afghans.

The number of sexual offence convictions of foreign nationals has increased by 62 per cent in four years, additional MoJ data obtained in August revealed.

Record numbers of foreign sex offenders and violent criminals are now being held in jails in England and Wales.

“The Policing Minister was crowing about the government’s action on small boats, but the truth is this — so far this year, the government have allowed in 23,000 illegal immigrants across the Channel — that is 52 per cent up on last year,” Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told parliament in July.

“This year has been by far the worst ever, and numbers in asylum hotels are now higher than at the time of the election. This is a border security crisis, but it is also a public safety crisis, especially for women and girls. Many nationalities crossing — for example, Afghans — commit up to 20 times more sex offences than average.”

Then-Policing Minister Diana Johnson replied that “any allegation of crime or sexual assault — including by individuals in the asylum system — is incredibly serious and is to be treated so by the authorities and by the government”.

“We have removed 5179 foreign national offenders in our first year in office,” she told parliament.

“I fully agree with [the right to] peaceful protest, but it is totally unacceptable when that steps over into violent disorder, as we saw last summer.”

frank.chung@news.com.au