4 Pakistanis get life term for gang rape in Australia

SYDNEY: Four Pakistani immigrant brothers face life sentences in Australia after they were convicted Thursday of the gang rape of two teenage girls in Sydney.

A New South Wales state Supreme Court jury found the two eldest brothers, aged 23 and 25, guilty of nine counts each of aggravated sexual assault in company. They had pleaded not guilty.

Following the verdict, the court lifted a suppression order on a trial earlier this year where the defendants’ two other brothers and another man aged 25 were convicted over the same attack.

None of the defendants can be identified because the two youngest brothers were aged under 18 at the time of the crime.

The court heard the men repeatedly raped two girls aged 16 and 17 at knifepoint at the brothers’ family home in Sydney in July 2002. The girlfriend of one of the brothers told the court she had been told by one of the accused they raped the girls “just for fun.”

The first trial heard the four brothers had all migrated from Pakistan over the past three years and the two brothers accused in the second trial repeatedly told the jury they knew nothing about the Australian justice system.

They claimed they were the victims of an anti-Muslim conspiracy and accused police of fabricating DNA evidence, mobile phone records and other incriminating evidence against them.—AFP

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