UK Politics
Refused Asylum After a Small Boat Crossing, Now Guilty of Raping a Woman in His Tent Under Hungerford Bridge
A jury found Moustafa Elbohy, a refused asylum seeker put in a hotel after a June 2025 small-boat crossing, guilty of raping a woman in his London tent.
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Should failed asylum seekers be detained until they are removed?
News | By Matt, Editor
He crossed the Channel in a small boat on 19 June last year and was put up in a hotel, where he claimed asylum. That claim has since been refused. On 20 September, three months after he landed, he raped a woman twice in his tent under Hungerford Bridge in central London.
On Friday a jury at Southwark Crown Court found Moustafa Elbohy, 32, from Egypt, guilty of two counts of rape, the Daily Mail reports. He denied both charges and claimed the woman had agreed to sex. He will be sentenced on Tuesday, 17 November.
The question nobody has answered yet is simple. How did a man the Home Office had put up in a hotel end up in a tent by the Embankment at midnight, and was anyone keeping track of him?
Have your sayTap to commentA night out, a tent and a translation app
The woman, who can’t be named for legal reasons, had been out with work colleagues and was heading home just after midnight on 20 September 2025, the court heard. Near Embankment station she stopped to chat to Elbohy and a group of men because she was interested in the Arabic they were speaking. She doesn’t speak it.
Prosecutor Richard Milne told jurors she had “not felt threatened in any way” at first. Elbohy then took her by the wrist and pulled her into a tarpaulin homeless camp beneath the bridge, GB News reports. There he used Google Translate on his phone to tell her what he wanted to do to her, forced her to the ground and raped her twice.
She told police he was “a really volatile, angry man”, and the prosecutor said she feared he might kill her. “I felt fear and scaredness. I felt disgusting,” she said.
When she got away she called a friend, who arrived within 15 minutes and took her to Charing Cross police station. Elbohy’s DNA was found on her, London Crime News reports. He had an Arabic interpreter in court, and the jury took just under eight hours to convict.
Small boat, hotel, refused, still here
Every report of the case tells the same story of how he got there. Elbohy came to Britain on a small boat on 19 June 2025 and was housed in a hotel, where he made an asylum claim that was refused, according to the Mail, GB News and the Sun. His address was formerly given as the DoubleTree by Hilton in Reading, Berkshire.
When he first appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in October last year, Metro reported that his asylum claim had been dismissed the month before and that he was understood to be considering an appeal. Magistrates refused bail because of how serious the allegations were. As he was led away he shouted: “I will not be able to sleep in prison. I will die.”
By the night of the attack he had a tent in a homeless camp under the bridge, a short walk from Parliament. Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf says the refusal came first and that he then went to live in a tent, “presumably to evade a deportation order”. The court reports don’t say whether the refusal came before or after the attack. None of the reports we have seen carries a Home Office explanation of why he was not detained or removed.
Shabana Mahmood had been Home Secretary for 15 days when the attack happened. She took over on 5 September 2025, GOV.UK records, and is still in post under Andy Burnham. When he crossed the Channel in June, the Home Office was run by Yvette Cooper, now Health Secretary.
“Why wasn’t he detained?”
Yusuf’s post this lunchtime was blunt. “Labour let an illegal migrant stay here even AFTER his asylum application was refused,” he wrote. “He was put in a hotel at your expense… Why wasn’t he detained?”
It’s the same question being asked all over social media since the verdict on Friday afternoon. Plenty of people are asking how a man who came in on a small boat and was housed by the state could end up living rough in the middle of London with nobody watching.
The answer, in part, is that a refused claim doesn’t mean removal. People can appeal, and while they do they usually stay. Even at the end of the process, removing someone depends on travel documents and on their home country taking them back. Our look at the foreign offenders backlog on Monday found 775 Jamaican offenders waiting to be deported and just 24 sent back. Detention space is limited and costly, so most refused asylum seekers are never locked up while they wait.
None of that helps the woman under Hungerford Bridge.
Not the first this week
It’s the third story in two days about who the system lets in, and who it lets go. On Friday we reported how a Rotherham rapist on unconditional bail flew to Qatar before his trial. This morning we asked how a Hamas leader’s former bodyguard was given asylum and then British citizenship.
And in Piddington, Oxfordshire, ministers have just granted planning permission for a camp for up to 1,256 men next to a small village, despite 3,177 objections.
He will be sentenced on Tuesday. What happens after that is up to the Home Office. Foreign nationals jailed for 12 months or more face automatic deportation under the UK Borders Act 2007, though appeals and human rights claims can drag that out for years.
Our view: This woman was failed long before she met him. A man arrives on a dinghy, is housed at public expense and within three months is living in a tent under one of London’s busiest bridges. Nobody seems to have checked where he’d gone. The Home Office has promised for years to remove people whose claims fail. If it can’t do that, it should hold them until it can. When he’s served his sentence, he should be on the first plane to Cairo, and the Home Secretary should explain to Parliament how he was allowed to wander free in the first place.
Should failed asylum seekers be detained until they are removed? Vote below.
Sources
- Daily Mail, 13 November 2026: verdict, small boat 19 June, hotel, asylum claim refused, sentencing 17 November
- GB News, 14 November 2026: court evidence, prosecutor Richard Milne, victim’s words
- The Sun, 14 November 2026: arrival three months before the attack, unsuccessful asylum claim, sentencing Tuesday
- London Crime News: conviction 13 November, DNA, remanded in custody
- Metro, 31 October 2025: first court appearance, asylum claim dismissed in September 2025, bail refused
- GOV.UK: Home Secretary: Shabana Mahmood, from 5 September 2025
- Zia Yusuf on X, 14 November 2026: Reform UK reaction
Main image: Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood with police officers in London (UK Home Office, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons); the walkway under Hungerford Bridge, London, file photo (Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons).
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