Serial rapist given life sentence for attacking more women
Mohammed Akram won a legal battle in 2017 to stop police checking on him but continued abusing women
- Published
A convicted killer and sex offender who raped a woman after no longer being deemed a risk has been given an indeterminate sentence.
Mohammed Akram, 64, won a legal battle to stop police checking on him but continued abusing women, the High Court in Glasgow heard.
He was convicted of nine charges of physically and sexually abusing three women between 2010 and 2021, including while one was pregnant.
Akram was told at that he would serve at least five years in prison under a order for lifelong restriction (OLR) before being considered for parole.
Some of the multiple rapes and assaults happened while he was subject to a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO), which he successfully appealed in 2017.
Akram already had sentences going back 40 years, having been jailed in 1979 for five years for the culpable homicide of a man behind a pub in Glenrothes, Fife.
In 2003, he was given a seven-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl.
He was then convicted in 2012 of abusing a four-year-old girl while he was still out on licence.
His first OLR was imposed but later overturned after it was concluded the trial judge misdirected jurors, and the girl's evidence considered unsafe because she became distracted during her two days as a court witness.
While Akram remained the subject of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO), those measures were lifted after a legal battle in 2017 when Sheriff Nigel Morrison ruled there was not enough evidence that Akram still posed a risk to the public.
The decision to remove the SOPO was thought to be the first of its kind in Scotland.
'No remorse'
In sentencing Akram for his latest crimes, Judge Gillian Wade said despite Akram having already served a number of jail terms there had been "no impact" on his "propensity" to reoffend.
The attacks happened in a flat in Edinburgh's Newhaven and at a property in Pollokshields, Glasgow and Clackmannan.
The jury also convicted him of raping a vulnerable girl, who has since died, at a flat in Stirling in January 1997.
Akram was also found guilty of five charges against a third female - three rapes, attempted murder and indecent assault - committed between June 1999 and October 2001.
He denied the accusations and claimed the woman he continued to abuse after the SOPO was removed remained "supportive".
The High Court in Glasgow heard Akram had a string of serious convictions
Akram claimed the girl he raped in 1997 had initiated sexual contact.
The prosecutor questioned why a "young, upset and vulnerable girl" at the time would have done this.
Akram replied: "Why are you shocked? Is it because I am an older man now?"
The other victim was repeatedly battered with a baton, glass bottle, hammer and dumbbell and subjected to degrading sex attacks, but Akram claimed to his KC Jim Keegan that he treated her "like a flower".
Sentencing, Judge Gillian Wade said Akram presented an "unequivocal high risk" and despite Akram's advancing years, lengthy sentences and post-release supervision were required.
Det Sg Ryan McMurray from Police Scotland said Akram had shown "no remorse for his violent and abusive actions".
"I would like to commend the women for their strength in coming forward during the investigation," he said. "Their information was essential in helping us build the case against him, and I hope this outcome provides them with some sense of closure."