An Iranian Kurd was jailed for five years on Wednesday after raping a sleeping woman in a sex attack committed while he was freed under three separate court bail orders.
Sharam Faraje assaulted the victim at her home in the Cathcart area of Glasgow before attacking police officers after he was detained. The woman later died but her evidence, given in a statement to police, proved vital in convicting her attacker at a trial.
A judge told Faraje, 40, at the High Court in Edinburgh: "Rape is always a serious crime." Judge Simon Collins KC said: "She is now sadly deceased. The jury must have accepted what she said to the police in her statement."
"What she told the police was you took sexual advantage of her when she was intoxicated and asleep within her flat," he said. The judge added: "You do not accept that but the jury did."
During the sentencing Faraje made several emotional outbursts and said: "Please believe me I didn't do nothing wrong. This isn't right. I am staying in UK. Where is the human rights?"
Mr Collins said he was conscious that Faraje denied his guilt but told him he had to sentence on the basis of the jury's verdict. He jailed him for four years for the rape and a further year for offences committed at a police station following his arrest.
He told Faraje that he would be placed on the sex offenders' register for an indefinite period following sentencing. The judge said that was without prejudice to any action the Home Secretary may take in relation to Faraje's immigration status, which remained unclear to him.
Faraje, a prisoner in Glasgow's Barlinnie jail, had denied several charges during his earlier trial but was found guilty of raping the woman, who was in her 40s, on September 16 in 2020 while she was asleep and incapable of consenting.
He had been freed on bail a month earlier from Edinburgh Sheriff Court and was also under previous bail orders from sheriff courts in Paisley and Glasgow. Faraje was also convicted of assaulting police officers and custody staff at Helen Street police station following his arrest by spitting at them and kicking out at them.
He was further convicted of behaving in a threatening and abusive manner at the Govan police station by shouting, swearing and making threatening and offensive remarks.
Defence counsel Dale Hughes said it was "inevitable" that a jail sentence would be imposed on Faraje. He said that the rape was "thankfully a brief episode".
He said that Faraje, who came to the UK in 2012, was "no stranger to the courts although this a significant escalation of matters".
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