Grooming gang victim was offered gift to drop case

The father of a member of a grooming gang offered a teenage victim a "gift" to have "pity" and drop the case against his son, a court has heard.

Huzaefa Alaboud and three others were jailed in 2024 for sexual offences against girls in Newcastle committed several years earlier, the city's crown court heard.

Alaboud's friend Abdullah Kalzli and father Ahmad Alaboud called the victim, who was 13 when she was abused by the gang, to implore her to withdraw her statements.

Ahmad Alaboud, a 59-year-old asylum seeker from Syria, and Kalzli, 21, both living in Throckley, admitted attempting to pervert the course of justice and were jailed for 10 months and nine months respectively.

After Huzaefa Alaboud and his associates were convicted in December 2023, Kalzli repeatedly asked a friend of one of the victims for the girl's contact details, prosecutor Mairi Clancy said.

Kalzli was "persistent" in his efforts and told the girl's friend he "needed to speak to her about giving her a gift to drop the court case", the court heard.

In a call secretly recorded by the girl's friend, Kalzli said he wanted to talk to her "about this problem" and "offer her good money as a gift".

Kalzli was given the girl's mother's number and made repeated calls, one of which was eventually answered by the girl, who was by now aged 19, the court heard.

Ahmad Alaboud also joined that call with Kalzli acting as his interpreter, Clancy said.

They told her Huzaefa Alaboud had previously had cancer and feared it may be returning while he was in prison, the court heard.

"You can just drop the case for him and we can give you something as a gift," the pair said, the court heard.

Kalzli said they were "just trying to sort this problem out nicely and kindly" and they would give her "whatever" she wanted, the court heard.

The victim recorded that call and gave it to police.

Huzaefa Alaboud was eventually jailed for five and a half years in 2024 for offences including rape, the court heard.

He and his gang groomed their young female victims with alcohol and cigarettes before abusing them, Clancy said.

In a statement, the victim said she had been trying to rebuild her life after the earlier abuse when the "insensitive and cruel" call from Kalzli and Ahmad Alaboud reopened it for her.

"Being a teenager should be carefree and fun, for me it was the worst years of my life," she said.

Her mother said the teenager had been "on the edge" for years since the abuse and she feared the call had "brought it all back".

In mitigation, the court heard Kalzli was "naive" and acted out of a "misplaced respect for an elder in his cultural community".

Representing Ahmad Alaboud, Rachel Hedworth said the lorry driver, his wife and three children fled Syria in 2013 when their house was destroyed in a bombing.

They spent several years in an asylum camp in Jordan before being moved by the United Nations to Newcastle in 2017 where they were given "housing and support", the court heard.

She said he had "very little knowledge" of his son's offending and was "desperately concerned" about him being in prison as he thought his childhood Hodgkin lymphoma could be returning.

He took the "foolish decision" to speak to the girl "in the hope she would take pity on him and he would be released from prison", Hedworth said.

"In my country negotiations take place between the parties during the course of court proceedings," Ahmad Alaboud said in a statement read to the court, adding: "I fully appreciate the position is entirely different here."

The court heard an application for leave to remain in the UK was pending for the family, all of whom, apart from Huzaefa Alaboud, had been leading a "very quiet law-abiding life".

Recorder Brian Whitehead said given there had already been a conviction by the time the rapist's father and friend tried to get the girl to withdraw her testimony, even if she had agreed it would likely have made no difference to the eventual outcome.

However it was a "serious" offence, the judge said, adding the girl had "suffered appalling sexual abuse as a young teenager which was then reopened with this offending".

Restraining orders banning the two men from contacting the girl were made to last for 10 years.

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