Islam versus Europe

A teenager told a court yesterday that aged 16 she was sold for sex to restaurant workers. She said that eight men from two Indian restaurants and a fish and chip shop waited “one after the other” to have sex with her for sums ranging from £20 to £40.

She gave all the money to Mubarek Ali, who had persuaded her to “sort these guys out”. He gave her mobile phone credit in return.

The girl’s police interviews were the first of a series to be played to a jury at Stafford Crown Court where seven men, aged from 21 to 52, face 52 charges linked to the grooming and sexual exploitation of girls aged from 13 to 17.

Now aged 18, the teenager is the first of seven from the small Shropshire town of Wellington, near Telford, who are expected to give evidence.

The girl watched yesterday as interviews recorded in December 2009 and May last year were played. In them she spoke of her relationship with Mr Ali, 28, and his brother, Ahdel Ali, 23, both of whom are alleged to have sold her to other men for sex.

She said she was 15 when she first slept with the younger brother, known as Eddie. Later, she said, “he actually sold me to some Asians”.

The girl said that Mubarek Ali, known as Max, “was the one that started it” by selling her to three men who worked at a restaurant called Lal Komal.

“They’d ring Max up, asking, and then Max would ask if I was coming out and when I got in the car he’d ask me . . . to sort these guys out.”

One of the men would come out of the restaurant, she said, and she would be taken upstairs where “I’d have sex with him and two others”. This had been repeated on five or six occasions.

Asked whether she would be able to identify the men who slept with her, the girl said: “I don’t know their names; I know what they look like.” She said she was also taken to a fish and chip shop for sex with two men “a lot more than five or six times”.

“Did you ever say no?” the police officer asked her. “There was one time when I was actually pregnant and I said I didn’t want to do it,” she replied.

The court heard that the girl also slept with Tanveer Ahmed, 39, known as T, when she was 15. They went on to have sex “quite a lot” but theirs was “just a sex relationship”.

She said Mr Ahmed introduced her to Mohammed Islam Choudhrey, 52. She went with them to a flat where she “got paralytic” and had sex.

She subsequently met Mr Choudhrey regularly for sex, and got money, alcohol, drugs and two mobile phones. She kept some cash but “other times I used to give it to Eddie and Max”.

The Ali brothers, Mr Ahmed, Mr Choudhrey, Mohammed Ali Sultan, 24, Noshad Hussain, 21, and Mahroof Khan, 33, deny charges including two rapes, nine counts of controlling child prostitution, trafficking children within the UK for sexual exploitation and 20 charges of sexual activity with a child. The trial continues.