Two men, believed to be Afghan asylum seekers, have been charged with the alleged rape of a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, has been charged with rape, and Mohammad Kabir, 23, has been charged with kidnap, strangulation and aiding and abetting rape of a girl under 13.
Both appeared at Coventry Magistrates’ Court and have been remanded in custody until their court appearance at Warwick Crown Court on August 26.
Warwickshire Police are asking anyone who was in the Cheveral Street area of Nuneaton around 8.30 pm and 9.45 pm on July 22 to come forward.
Warwickshire Police did not deny a Mail on Sunday report which said Mulakhil and Kabir are asylum seekers.
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The crime has sparked outrage, following a month fraught with tension over the alleged sex attack on another young girl by a migrant in Epping.
The force said: ‘Where relevant, sensitive information around locations, details of the crime and policing activity to catch offenders can be shared, with a warning that this is sensitive or confidential information and disclosure by those being briefed could affect future court hearings.
‘Once someone is charged with an offence, we follow national guidance. This guidance does not include sharing ethnicity or immigration status.’
Blackburn MP Adnan Hussain wrote on X: ‘Seeking asylum is appealing to the goodness of a nation and its people, to grant you safety.
‘To commit a crime so horrific while seeking asylum is barbaric. If found guilty, they should be sent back without further question.’
Last month, large crowds gathered outside the Bell Hotel in Epping to protest the housing of migrants there, after a resident of the hotel was charged with multiple crimes a week after arriving in the UK.
In the chaos, two hotel workers who had just got off the bus to begin their shift at the Essex hotel were ‘set upon by a group of men’, mistaking them for guests at the hotel.
Tensions are still heightened in the community after an Ethiopian man, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, was charged with three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity, and one count of harassment without violence.
Kebatu lives at the hotel and was remanded in custody after his hearing, but denies any wrongdoing.
Last year, similar scenes unfolded outside of a migrant hotel in Rotherham when far-right rioters attempted to break into the building in the aftermath of the Southport killings.
In videos shared online, the mob was seen throwing bricks and chairs at officers with riot shields, before smashing windows and entering the building while chanting ‘Yorkshire, Yorkshire’.
Members of the mob, who waved Union flags and the St George’s Cross, taunted police in the car park of the hotel.
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