Afghan migrant jailed for raping two schoolgirls

Bakatash arrived in the UK in 2022 with indefinite leave to remain status. He used Snapchat to groom one victim and then invited both girls to his flat in December, where he gave them vodka mixed with Coke and raped them repeatedly as they slipped in and out of consciousness. One victim managed to escape and knocked on a neighbor's door, telling them, "He's trying to rape my friend. She's locked in. He's raping her."

At Bolton Crown Court, the judge found the crimes horrendous. Bakatash was convicted of two counts of rape, two of assault by penetration, and one of sexual assault. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison followed by two years on license, with a 20-year restraining order barring contact with anyone under 16. The judge warned that he poses a risk of intoxicating adult women to commit rape in the future. According to police, one victim told officers she kept thinking she was going to die during the assault.

During the four-week trial, Bakatash's account of events changed repeatedly. He first denied that the crimes ever happened at all. When that failed, he claimed the girls had told him they were 19 and nearly 18 years old, and that the sexual activity was consensual and initiated by them. When confronted with evidence, he abandoned that narrative entirely and insisted no sexual activity had occurred.

Testifying through an interpreter, Bakatash claimed that after drinking vodka, "Satan took over" him—a defense that the court rejected. His contradictory statements across four weeks of proceedings made clear the weakness of any genuine defense to the charges.

Chief Superintendent Helen Critley of Greater Manchester Police stated that Bakatash showed a blatant disregard for his victims and the long-term impact of his crimes. The girls will live with the psychological consequences for the rest of their lives. Bakatash, by contrast, will be released on license in less than ten years if he behaves well in prison—a disparity that underscores the permanence of the victims' suffering against the relative brevity of his sentence.

Greater Manchester Police arrested Bakatash within 48 hours of him fleeing to his brother's house after the assault. The force emphasized that the long-term psychological damage to the victims stands in stark contrast to the limited time he will spend behind bars.

Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, articulated the government's stance on asylum dispersal. He said, "We cannot have a situation where it's only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers. I do believe all parts of the country need to play their part." Burnham acknowledged the challenge is difficult and that the government is working on solutions, while expressing understanding of public concerns.

The government's position is that the burden of housing asylum seekers should be shared equitably across wealthy and poor regions alike, rather than concentrating migrants in disadvantaged areas. This statement becomes the target of Armstrong's rhetorical challenge about accountability for the consequences of border policy.

Armstrong posed a pointed question to the government's burden-sharing argument: Will Burnham and other officials share responsibility if future rapes result from the government's failure to properly vet and control border arrivals? He framed the issue as one of governmental accountability, linking potential future crimes directly to what he characterized as the open border policy and inadequate vetting procedures. The implication was stark—if all communities must accept asylum seekers, then all communities must accept the risk that comes with insufficient security screening.

Armstrong stated his intention to keep reporting on cases involving migrant offenders, regardless of political pressure or accusations of bias.

Lord Bailey introduced a broader pattern, asserting that week after week, another two underage girls are raped. He did not cite specific numbers or official statistics in his remark, but framed the frequency as the defining feature of the problem—not isolated incidents but a recurring weekly phenomenon. This framing sets up the argument that the issue is systemic rather than exceptional.

The implication is that Bakatash's case is representative of a larger pattern of sexual violence against minors, rather than an outlier. This claim became the foundation for the subsequent argument that current immigration and vetting policies are enabling repeated offenses.

Lord Bailey argued that the public discourse on immigration and cultural integration is being suppressed by fear of being labeled racist. He stated, "Being called racist is much preferable to letting young girls get raped." His point was that the political cost of being accused of racism has become so high that it prevents serious discussion of how cultural practices and attitudes toward women might differ among some migrant populations.

He claimed that members of the "chattering classes"—educated commentators and policymakers—back away from the issue rather than risk the reputational damage of being associated with immigration skepticism. In his framing, political correctness becomes a barrier to protecting vulnerable young girls.

A guest identified as Linda offered a personal testimony about her encounters with Afghan men from rural areas. She said, "When they came from rural areas of Afghanistan with a different mindset and a different culture, they behave in an entirely different way. I have been threatened by them and I've had to go to the police about it." She recounted that some men threatened her even though they did not know where she lived, forcing her to involve the authorities.

Her account was offered as evidence that cultural differences manifest in threatening behavior toward women, and that these differences are not merely abstract but expressed in criminal conduct. The anecdote was used to support the broader argument that some migrants bring attitudes incompatible with British law and norms around women's safety.

Linda argued that a 14-year prison sentence itself demonstrates how horrendous the crimes were, since courts do not hand down such lengthy terms lightly. She advocated that after Bakatash serves his time—or whatever portion of it he actually serves—he must be deported from the country. Her position was that lengthy sentences for sexual crimes should trigger automatic deportation rather than allowing the offender to remain in Britain upon release.

She also criticized British courts for being too lenient on rapists more broadly, suggesting that the 14-year sentence, while significant, still underrepresents the gravity of attacking two children. Her call for mandatory deportation following the sentence reflected frustration that even conviction does not guarantee removal from the country.

Given that arrivals are falling, his logic held, those who do arrive should be distributed across the country rather than concentrated in a few areas.

Matthew's position was that the 40% year-on-year reduction proved the government was moving in the right direction and therefore had earned the credibility to argue for shared responsibility. The implication was that if the overall number of arrivals is falling, the burden-sharing argument becomes more manageable and fairer to poor communities.

Armstrong raised a distinction that had not been clearly established: the identity and background of the perpetrator. He noted, "The people that came under Operation Pitting or several other schemes were evacuees and they came because they helped the British army." Operation Pitting and other formal evacuation programs brought individuals specifically because of their documented assistance to British military operations in Afghanistan.

The implication was that these evacuees underwent vetting tied to their prior service and were therefore known quantities to the government. However, it remained unclear whether Bakatash fell into this category or arrived through undocumented channels. This uncertainty became the springboard for Armstrong's argument about the risks of admitting people whose backgrounds, documents, and intentions cannot be verified.

Armstrong argued that the government faces a known and documented challenge in vetting and integrating migrants from certain regions. He stated, "If we don't know who they are, how they are, we're taking a big risk. And what we definitely do know about them, they grew up in entirely different culture. They view women in an entirely different way." His point was twofold: first, that the identity and background of boat arrivals often cannot be verified due to destroyed documentation; second, that even when identity is confirmed, migrants from certain regions grew up with fundamentally different cultural norms regarding women's rights and consent.

Armstrong asserted that the government itself acknowledges this cultural difference—he referenced a controversial government booklet distributed on the topic—yet continues to admit migrants without adequately addressing the integration risk. The argument positioned cultural incompatibility not as speculation but as an acknowledged fact that policy should account for.

Armstrong accepted Matthew's figures but reframed their significance. He said, "Matthew's correct about the figures, but it's falling 40% from such a high point." His point was that a 40% reduction sounds impressive in isolation but becomes less reassuring when the starting baseline was extraordinarily high. A 40% drop from an already unprecedented level of arrivals still leaves large absolute numbers of undocumented migrants entering the country.

This objection questioned whether the government's policy approach is actually working or merely reducing the rate of failure. The distinction matters: if the goal is to prevent undocumented arrivals entirely, then even a 40% drop means the policy is still failing the majority of the time. Armstrong's reframing challenged the government's use of percentage decline as evidence of success.

The practical challenge of vetting was spelled out through testimony about procedures that were once used and are no longer available. According to a speaker involved in border enforcement, documentation is routinely thrown into the water before boats arrive in British waters, making it impossible to verify where migrants came from or their true identities. In previous years, authorities could confiscate and search migrants' phones to cross-reference contacts, travel history, and other identifying information.

That practice has been prohibited under current British law, apparently after the government faced legal challenges and suits from migrants seeking compensation for having their phones taken. The result is a documentation gap: arriving migrants often carry no papers, cannot be matched against travel records, and cannot have their phones searched—leaving British authorities with minimal ability to vet them. This procedural limitation became central to the argument that the government has effectively opened the border by making verification impossible.

A panelist drew a stark contrast between Kabul, which had become more progressive before the Taliban takeover, and rural areas of Afghanistan. In rural outlying regions, the guest said, women were treated as "second ass citizens"—and that characterization itself was described as generous. Some women were viewed as nothing more than "human incubators," stripped of personhood and reduced to biological function. To illustrate the depth of this dehumanization, the guest referenced a woman who had been stoned to death in a town square less than ten years ago.

This testimony was offered as historical evidence that certain rural Afghan populations operated within a framework where violence against women was normalized and where the concept of consent was essentially absent. The argument positioned Bakatash's assault not as an individual aberration but as potentially reflecting values he absorbed growing up in such an environment. The testimony thus anchored the cultural difference argument in documented historical practice rather than stereotype.

The panel debated whether it was permissible to describe certain cultural practices as morally inferior without being labeled as culturally intolerant. One speaker posed the question directly: if a culture endorses child rape and child marriage as acceptable practices, including for 14-year-old girls, can that culture be described as the moral equal of one that criminalizes such acts? One panelist responded, "If a culture values child rape or child marriage and they say that's okay, that's fine, 14-year-old girls absolutely fine, I would say they're lesser."

Matthew, the government-aligned panelist, argued that the term "equal" itself implies "different worth," and tried to reframe the discussion away from moral hierarchy. He claimed he would campaign against child marriage and sexual violence if he lived in such a society. In response, another panelist pointed out that Matthew would likely not be invited back on television if he made such arguments domestically. The exchange crystallized the tension: one side argued that practices like child rape represent demonstrably inferior values; the other side resisted the language of cultural inferiority even while acknowledging such practices are harmful. The conclusion from one speaker was stark: "There is not differences. That is a lesser culture"—pointing to cultural practices of killing gay people and racism as evidence.

The charge was that niceness, in the context of inadequate vetting and rapid dispersal, amounts to negligence.