Minicab rapist jailed

An illegal minicab driver who preyed on women late at night in the West End was jailed for nine years for rape at the Old Bailey today.

Mohammed Akhtar, 28, an Afghan who was granted political asylum to stay in Britain in 1999, picked up his victims outside bars in an unlicensed car.

He attacked one of them in a graveyard and the other in a side street close to her Kensington hotel.

Akhtar, from Hendon, pleaded guilty to two charges of rape in June and July this year. His first victim, a 19-year-old Norwegian university student, is too scarred by her ordeal to return to London; and his second, aged 31, still suffers from nightmares and loss of vision and wakes up screaming.

Today Judge Christopher Moss told Akhtar that the attacks on "vulnerable and defenceless women" were "brutal and wicked".