‘No risk to public’... then rapist struck again and again

A CONVICTED killer and sex offender deemed no longer a risk to the public went on to commit multiple rapes, a court heard.

Mohammed Akram, who has a string of convictions for violent and sexual offences dating back to 1979, repeatedly attacked his victim during a decade of abuse.

Akram, 64, began targeting the woman after an Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR) was overturned and, after seven years of abuse, a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) was lifted when he was ruled to be no longer a risk to the public.

Akram has now been convicted of repeatedly raping the woman between December 2010 and March 2022 at flats in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

At the High Court in Glasgow, he was also found guilty of a separate charge of raping the same woman in Edinburgh in

March 2021 and of repeated assaults between January 1995 and December 2000 in Glasgow and Clackmannanshire.

Jurors also convicted him of raping a vulnerable girl at a flat in Stirling in January 1997. The court heard how Akram was jailed for five years in 1979 for the culpable homicide of a man in Glenrothes, Fife.

In 2003, he was jailed for seven years for sexually assaulting a teenage girl.

Akram was later released, but went on to be convicted in 2012 of abusing a four-year-old girl.

He was also found guilty of five charges against a third female – three rapes, attempted

‘Risk assessment report’

murder and indecent assault, between June 1999 and October 2001 at various locations.

An OLR was imposed but it was overturned after it was ruled the trial judge had misdirected jurors. Akram still had a SOPO but it was lifted in 2017 when it was decided there was not enough evidence that he posed a risk to the public.

Akram was due to be sentenced yesterday but the hearing was told he had not complied with his background report. Judge Gillian Wade, KC, said: ‘I will adjourn the matter for a risk assessment report.’