A Scottish Government guard was remanded in custody today after being found guilty of raping a woman whom he'd met only hours earlier during the Edinburgh Festival.
Khalid Alsrooji, 35, took his victim to a pal's flat in the city's Cowgate because he said his own strict-Muslim home-mate did not approve of him drinking.
On the sofa of a stranger to her, the 23-year-old East Lothian woman, who'd been in Edinburgh working at a Festival venue, drifted into an intoxicated sleep and woke to find her lower clothing had been removed and Alsrooji was having unprotected sex with her without her consent.
Breakdown products of cocaine, ecstasy and Prozac were later found in her blood despite the fact that she said she had not taken any of the drugs.
A jury at High Court in Stirling found she was the second 23-year-old woman whom Alsrooji, who moonlighted as a nightclub doorman alongside his day job as a Scottish Government security guard, had sexually assaulted in less than two years, meeting his victims when they were on nights out and at after-parties.
Both young women were described as heavily asleep or unconscious, having been invited to strangers' flats after visiting Edinburgh nightspots the Opal Lounge and Please Don't Tell.
The woman targeted during the Festival, now an IT designer, said that after work on the night of the incident in August 2019 she'd met a male friend she'd known since primary school and remembered having just two wines and a shot of Tequlia in Please Don't Tell.
She said: "I don't remember leaving Please Don't Tell. My next memory is waking up on a couch facing the wall in an unknown flat.
"My eyes were closed when I woke up and I felt someone holding onto my waist. I felt someone attempting to penetrate me. I didn't have enough energy to move or do anything about it. I couldn't move or open my eyes."
Weeping, she continued: "I woke up several more times, each time with more ability to move, but I knew they were successful at some point.
"The person appeared to be behind me."
She said, "No, stop" and Alsrooji retorted "I don't want to force you."
The court heard that all the time the rape was going on, the woman's male childhood friend was "unconscious" in an armchair opposite them, having fallen asleep after having a drink with Alsrooji.
Eventually he came to and roused her and told her they should leave at once. She then found her underwear and trousers had been removed while she was asleep and were lying under a blanket on the sofa beside her.
She said she had "no idea" who Alsrooji, who had stripped to his boxers before the rape, was.
Her ordeal was reported to police after she went to hospital "terrified" of having been given an STD or made pregnant.
Alsrooji was arrested and it emerged he had previously been questioned in September 2017 after a complaint that he had sexually assaulted two other women, also 23 at the time, at a party in a flat in Leith, where they had fallen heavily asleep after visiting the Opal Lounge nightspot in Edinburgh.
One of the women said she woke to find Alsrooji in bed with them, "straddling" her friend, who was fully dressed but apparently unconscious after having a drink with Alsrooji, and trying to undo her belt buckle.
She shifted position to put herself between Alsrooji and her friend, and Alsrooji then targeted her and ended up ripping her trousers.
She said she told her friend "he's tried to rape us" and they reported the incident to police.
The women were told they "didn't have enough evidence" and the case was being dropped, until the later incident emerged.
The woman, a customer service advisor, said she had lodged a complaint about the way her case was handled.
After an eight day trial, a jury took less than 90 minutes to find Alsrooji, of Gorgie, Edinburgh, guilty of raping the woman in the 2019 incident while she was intoxicated and asleep and unable to give or withhold consent, and assaulting with intent to rape the woman whose trousers he ripped in the 2017 incident.
A charge of sexually assaulting the woman whose belt he allegedly tried to unfasten was found not proven.
The now-married father-of-one had denied the charges and said the 2017 incidents had never happened and the victim in the 2019 incident had sex with him voluntarily.
Allegations that he had administered a substance for the purpose of stupefying or overpowering the women were dropped by the prosecution.
Prosecutor David Taylor said Alsrooji's victims had found themselves "vulnerable, intoxicated and alone" with a man whose only care was that he sexually enjoyed himself, and did not care whether they consented or not.
Judge Lord Weir deferred sentence for reports until February 17th at the High Court in Livingston, and revoked bail.
Alsrooji was placed on the sex offenders' register.
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