Taxi Driver Convicted of Raping Passenger

A runaway Glasgow taxi driver who told a jury that extra-marital sex was a sin was found guilty of raping a teenager and sexually pestering two other young girls. Arshad Mohammed fled to Norway in a bid to dodge the rape rap, and had to be extradited back to Scotland after a two-year hunt. Mohammed, 48, who claimed British girls found out about sex early, drove his 19 year old victim down a dark dead-end lane and forced himself on her in the back seat of his Skoda. He abducted her only minutes after she trustingly got into his minicab in her pyjamas -- with a coat on top -- following an evening chilling at a pal's and watching the X-Factor. After the attack he told her, "See you after, princess". She went round to a friend's house in tears, and the police were called. Mohammed, who drove for city firm 50-50 Cabs and was described as having "more than one teenage daughters" and a wife in Pakistan, was eventually caught several months after the November 2010 rape - nailed after he targeted two other lone, teenage, girl passengers. He was detained by police twice, in March and April 2011, after he subjected them both to explicit sex talk. Both girls reported his bad patter, and he was required to give a DNA sample. His genetic code turned out to match the DNA on a swab taken from the rape victim, and he was arrested. Pakistan-born Mohammed, who holds Italian citizenship, then appeared at Paisley Sheriff Court on June 13th 2011, and was granted bail - which he immediately broke, failing to report to police, failing to hand in his Italian passport, and failing to appear at the High Court in Glasgow in April 2012. Prosecutor Jane Farquharson said: "It is understood he left the country the next day." He was arrested in Norway on a European Arrest Warrant two years later, and extradited back to the UK last August. After a six day trial at the High Court in Stirling, jurors took three hours to find him guilty, by majority, of abducting the girl in his taxi and raping her. His lips had moved silently in the dock as the nine men and six women filed back into the jury box. He had lodged a special defence of consent, and claimed that his victim had asked him if he wanted to have sex. He claimed she said afterwards, "Thank you driver, now I can get a good night's sleep." When he repeated the remark to police, incredulous detectives asked him, "Is that what she said to you - 'thank you, DRIVER'?" In court, he claimed a "disability" in his legs made it only possible for him to have consensual sex. He was also found guilty, unanimously of two charges of breach of the peace for uttering the remarks to the 17 year old girls. Judge Lord Matthews said there was a "substantial sexual element" to the breaches of the peace. Mohammed insisted there were cultural differences in attitudes to sex between Scotland and Pakistan, and here children knew about it early. Ms Farquharson, the advocate depute, asked him if it wasn't a sin in his religion to even think about having sex with someone who wasn't his wife. He said: "In my religion, in my faith, in my culture, it's a big sin - but in this culture it happens." During his five day trial, the rape victim, classed as a vulnerable witness, gave evidence from behind a screen. Now 24, she recalled her terror when Mohammed stopped the engine, got into the back seat with her, and raped her. She said: "He put the locks on so I wouldn't get out of the car... I tried to push him away. "I was shouting for somebody to come and help me, but nobody was around." She said she had got into the taxi in Govan and he had driven her to the dead-end in Neilston, Renfrewshire. She said after he let her go she went round to the home of another friend. She said:"I was breaking my heart, crying, when I got in her flat. I told her I just got raped, and she called the police." Lord Matthews placed Mohammed on the sex offenders register and said he faced a sentence of "years". He deferred sentence for reports to a sitting of the High Court in Glasgow on May 1st and remanded him in custody. Defence advocate Kevin MCallum said he would reserve his speech in mitigation until the sentencing.