The tight-knit, seaside community of Rhyl, Wales was shocked last month after four Pakistani men and a local woman went to trial for numerous sex offences including rape, sexual assault, perverting the course of justice, conspiracy to traffic, and conspiracy to supply drugs. The shocking offences which allegedly took place between 2022-2024, involved three girls aged between 14 and 16 years old, one of which was at “high risk of sexual exploitation” according to Caernarfron Crown Court.
Opening the case for the prosecution, Owen Edwards KC said three girls were sexually exploited “at the hands of four men from Rhyl”. The typical framing.
The jury heard from a support worker at the ongoing trial, which began recently, that there were concerns for a child’s emotional wellbeing, physical safety and use of drugs. This child, known only as Child B due to her age, was allegedly raped by three of the defendants Mustafa Iqbal, 43, Mohamed Arshad, 36, and Ziaullah Badshah, 25 over a period of two years. They deny all charges.
When questioned by one of the defendant’s barristers whether Child B had felt “let down” by the authorities, the support worker confirmed that she had. Mr Edwards said, “she struggles to remember the number of times she had full sexual intercourse with Badshah.” She was also pressured to give oral sex to Arshad in an alleyway by his cafe in exchange for a “spliff”. Mr Edwards added that Iqbal had sex with this girl on an “almost daily basis” from their first encounter and treated her as “literally, his sex slave”.
The second child, Child C, has since spoken at the trial and confirmed Child B’s account of the events, saying that the men are lying about not carrying out sexual offences against them. Mustafa Iqbal claims he did not molest Child C in a car, while Mohamed Arshad also denies molesting her and supplying her with cannabis. They also deny transporting her to Iqbal’s house, or taking her upstairs with Child B.
In giving evidence, she said that all this was false, as well as Mr Iqbal’s claim that there was no sexual activity during a beach trip. Another sexual incident took place on Mr Iqbal’s couch and that all four men, including Jaswinder Singh, 65 gave them drugs.
On 11th May, the jury viewed police interviews from the third girl, Child A, in which Iqbal is charged with raping, requiring her to perform humiliating compulsory labour, facilitating her travel to London with the purpose of exploitation and supplying with drugs.
In these interviews, she said Iqbal would pick her up in a car and order her to lie down in his vehicle to avoid detection, where he later drove her to the house of his other co-defendant Sarah Gray, 53, who he gave drugs to in exchange for the use of her house. Gray is also charged with supplying Child A with drugs, assisting an offender, by allowing her house to be used to rape her, and perverting the court of justice in which she allegedly washed the bedsheets after the act.
Iqbal gave Child A crack cocaine, cannabis and apart from when he was away in Birmingham, he had sex with her every night for five months, she says. Handcuffs were also involved to force her to have sex with him. £5,000 worth of drugs were provided to her, and when asked how she felt about the ordeal, she said “no” and “don’t” to Iqbal several times. She was, “disgusted, and that it is belittling being used like that.” She also added: “I know I said to him that I didn’t want to sleep with him, I never enjoyed it. It was always for his benefit.”
Mr Edwards added that Iqbal was the main abuser, who was a delivery driver and drug dealer who “routinely got his way” with this girl, and “didn’t consider she had the right to say no to him.”
She was used as a “sexual plaything” who “suffered his incessant sexual demands.” “At no stage did any girl genuinely consent to any of the sexual acts provided. The relationships were exploitative, not consensual.”
More grim details have emerged from court that Mustafa Iqbal may have been in phone contact with a fourth girl shortly before his final arrest, despite there being an order in place preventing that. North Wales Police intelligence analyst Anne Marie Fisher told the court that there was contact between Iqbal and another girl, Child E, on July 18th, 2025. Attempted phone calls and calls were made between their numbers on July 19th and 30th, and every day between August 2nd and 6th. Iqbal was first arrested back in April 2022, was then arrested for the final time on August 7th and charged on the 8th.
The jury was informed that his communication with Child E constituted a breach of a slavery/trafficking order, as he was already under investigation for the sexual exploitation of the other girls when this order was made at Llandudno Magistrates Court in December of 2024. “Mr Iqbal is a predator who targets young females. He views them as sexual commodities, to be used as he wants.” Mr Edwards relayed in his opening.
The group face a total of 28 charges between them, with 21 separate charges against Mustafa Iqbal which include: four counts of rape, three counts of conspiracy to require a person to perform compulsory labour, three counts of sexual assault, three counts of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent, two counts of conspiracy to traffic, conspiracy to supply both cannabis and cocaine, arranging or facilitating the travel of another person with a view to exploitation and breaching a slavery/trafficking risk order.
Charges against Mohamed Arshad also include multiple counts of rape, two counts of conspiracy to traffic, two counts of conspiracy to require a person to perform compulsory labour and supplying cannabis to another. Ziaullah Badshah is also under suspicion of two counts of rape, two counts of conspiracy to traffic and supplying cannabis to another.
The trial itself is set to last several more weeks. Though no convictions have yet been made, and we must be clear on that, the harrowing details so far should unfortunately be all too familiar to us by now, considering the sheer scale of this great crime committed against White British girls by predominantly foreign men of Pakistani heritage over decades.
What is troubling in this particular case still is that Rhyl is still majority 96.4% White British, with the “Asian/Asian British” making up only 1.5% of that community. If they were to be convicted, it would shine a grim light on the reality that they can still inflict great harm on the local community, despite these smaller numbers as compared with certain places in England like Rotherham, Bradford or Rochdale.
As a Welshman myself, this is particularly painful and upsetting to witness, having thought that Wales was mostly spared from the industrial rape that our English neighbours have suffered over the many long years. The harsh truth is that I believe nowhere is untouched by this imported depravity in our own midst, and it all could have been avoided entirely.
Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain and MP for Great Yarmouth is set to release his own private Rape Gang Inquiry Report in the coming weeks which will no doubt re-open that wound on our country, and our collective consciousness as a native people who have suffered too much already. If it can happen somewhere like Rhyl, in the heart of picturesque Denbighshire, North Wales, our own very Welsh shires, then it can happen absolutely anywhere. No where is safe.
