A predatory refugee who sexually assaulted two women while roaming the streets of a Scottish town ‘looking for a good time’ has been jailed for four years.

Asylum seeker Muhammad Sheikhi ‘deliberately targeted women who were alone and vulnerable’ as they walked home after a night out.

In addition to the prison sentence, Sheikhi was placed on the sex offenders register for life, and made subject to a ten-year non-harassment order preventing him from approaching or contacting either of the women he attacked.

The 33-year-old appeared for sentence yesterday after being found guilty by a jury in May of attacking his ‘terrified’ and ‘violated’ young victims in Falkirk in the early hours of a Sunday.

Last night, the father of one victim said he blamed the UK Government and lack of border security for the incidents.

He said: ‘If the Government had done its job correctly Sheikhi wouldn’t be in this county and this wouldn’t have happened. He shouldn’t be in this country – he’s illegal.’

Both women, who had been in different nightclubs, were attacked separately within little more than an hour. CCTV footage showed him also approaching a third, who went on her way unaccosted.

Sheikhi, a Syrian barber who came to Britain on a small boat, denied any sexual contact, telling police: ‘Only animals would do that publicly.’

The incidents on November 30 last year came only hours after major pro and anti-immigration demonstrations were held around the town’s Cladhan Hotel.

Feelings were inflamed after an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, Sadeq Nikzad, 29, was convicted in June 2025 of raping a 15-year-old girl in Falkirk town centre.

Sheikhi – who claimed he had faced violence in Syria, been shot six times, and was part of an anti-terror coalition in the country – was being accommodated in the Cladhan by the Home Office.

He sexually assaulted his first victim, aged 22, under a railway bridge as she walked back from the Maniqui nightclub which she’d left at 2.10am.

His second victim, aged 21, was targeted in the town’s Bellsmeadow skatepark as she walked to a friend’s house from the town’s XOXO nightspot at 2.30am.

Stirling Sheriff Court heard Sheikhi had been ‘roaming round’ the town centre for hours.

He was arrested in his room at the Cladhan at 6.25 the same morning. Through an Arabic interpreter, Sheikhi told police he had been on the streets because ‘I am just a young man like everybody else who wants to have a good time’.

Known as ‘Jan’, he had pleaded not guilty to both charges.

Advocate Paul Keenan, in mitigation, said Sheikhi came to the UK ‘seeking a safer life’. He had fled Syria and the ‘terrors of Isis’ who had murdered his sister, aunt, uncle and cousin. He had also been forced to work in construction at the age of just five.

Sheriff Keith O’Mahony, who read impact statements from both victims before pronouncing sentence, told Sheikhi the jury had been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that he was guilty. He said: ‘On my assessment these were not spontaneous or accidental acts. They were deliberate, predatory sexual assaults committed against strangers who had every right to walk home in safety.

‘You treated these women as though their autonomy, dignity, and bodily integrity counted for nothing.‘Such conduct is a profound violation of another person’s freedom and security. It causes fear, humiliation and had the potential to cause lasting psychological harm.’ Sheriff O’Mahony added: ‘I acknowledge in open court the courage of the women in coming forward and giving evidence.’

Sheikhi shook and wept openly as he was led, handcuffed to a guard, to the cells. Sheikhi’s victims, who were in court to hear the sheriff praise them, declined to comment after the case.

Procurator fiscal Helen Nisbet said: ‘Muhammad Sheikhi targeted two young women who were simply trying to get home safely and subjected them to deeply distressing sexual assaults.

‘Their courage in coming forward has enabled him to be held accountable for his crimes.’