SHEFFIELD

For Safraz, it was an unremarkable job on a busy but ordinary night of being a taxi driver in one of Yorkshire’s biggest cities, Sheffield.

Little did the father-of-three know the late-night journey would soon plunge him into a nightmare that would end with him in prison, convicted of a rape he had never committed. It took the tenacity of family and friends to eventually clear his name after he had spent 18 months in jail as they uncovered vital telephone records that proved he was on a conference call at the time of the alleged incident - evidence which South Yorkshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service claimed did not exist and was never presented to the jury in his original trial.

Almost four years after his conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal because of the new evidence and following the lead detective in the case admitting he had “made mistakes” in his investigation, Safraz has decided to come forward to tell his story to The Yorkshire Post.

Safraz, not his real name, has decided to tell his story following the CPS announcing a review of all rape and serious sexual assault cases last month in light of the collapse of a number of high profile trials because of evidence disclosure failures. He said he was particularly shocked by the case of Liam Allan, a 22-year-old student who was wrongly accused of rape and whose trial collapsed after the Met Police were ordered to hand over thousands of text message records that proved he was innocent but which had not been disclosed to lawyers.

Safraz says the parallels with his case have led him to speak out to highlight that similar investigative failings have been occurring for years.

He does not wish to disclose his identity as his original case never received any press coverage and does not want to affect his family or his future job prospects. But he has shared court documents and transcripts with The Yorkshire Post relating to his case that raise serious questions about how the investigation was handled.

Now 30 and a father-of-four, he tells his story in a Sheffield cafe on an overcast day with a mixture of righteous anger and weary disbelief. Safraz says the first he heard of the allegation was a couple of days after his shift on December 3, 2011 when he received a call from his taxi firm explaining the police wanted to speak to him.

“I had a knock at my door and I was arrested on suspicion of rape. I was in absolute shock, I couldn’t even remember which job they were talking about where this was supposed to have happened until I got to the Sheffield Parkway and they gave me some detail about what the allegation was. “It took me some time to remember who they were talking about as I had 25 to 30 jobs that night.

It had just been an ordinary job, just business as usual.” He learned the allegation was that while driving her home, he had stopped in a lay-by, climbed between the front seats into the back and raped her before getting back in the front seat and driving away and dropping her off at her home.

The entire incident was said to have occurred within two minutes and 50 seconds between the complainant ending one phone call with her boyfriend and then starting another one. Safraz says: “It was the first time I had ever been in a police station, I’m just an ordinary citizen. They did offer me a free solicitor but I refused to take one because I said I had nothing to hide. I answered every single question asked by the police, the interview lasted about two hours.

I had faith the police would find the truth and I wanted to find them information to help them find the real perpetrator if there had been one.” One of the key pieces he told police back in the December 2011 interview was that during the time when the alleged incident happened, he had been on a lengthy three-way conference call with colleagues who would be able to confirm nothing had happened.

Safraz was not charged until July 2012 and the trial took place in January 2013, over a year after the alleged incident and subsequent police interview. But a court transcript shows that the detective constable who led the investigation told the trial that the phone records relating to the potential conference were not available as the data gets overwritten after a year. He said he made enquiries about the matter a week before the trial was due to start.

The detective accepted under cross-examination that if records had shown the conference call was taking place during the alleged incident, it may indicate that Safraz “possibly wasn’t responsible” for a rape. When asked whether he was content with the way he had investigated the matter, the officer replied: “Clearly now that I have made mistakes, I have to accept that.”

The other two men on the conference call were called as witnesses in Safraz’s defence but were cross-examined on the basis “they had simply concocted this evidence to protect a friend”. After a ten-day trial, Safraz was convicted by a jury at Sheffield Crown Court of rape and subsequently sentenced to seven years in prison. He says: “You can’t understand how important this evidence was for the whole case - if I had been lying, it would have proved it. “You can’t really blame the jury because if this evidence was in front of them, their verdict might have been different. “But I had been let down by the police and let down by the justice system. I cried for half-an-hour, I couldn’t control my emotions. I knew I was going to prison for a very long time. “If I had really done something, I would have accepted it on the first day, I wouldn’t have gone through the trial, I would have taken 100 years in prison if that was the sentence. But there was never any guilt, I couldn’t accept something I hadn’t done

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Rochdale Borough Council has refused to divulge how many local taxi drivers had been convicted of a serious criminal offence at the time of application for a licence.

In its response to a Freedom of Information request, the Council says it would take too long to search "approximately 1,600 files", claiming it would take 186 hours, well above the statutory limit of 18 hours provided in the Freedom of Information Act.

The refusal is based on the council claiming that it would require searching through 1,600 hard copies.

The council response goes on to explain an astonishing lack of organisation:

'The files vary in size. Some of the files are relatively slim, but others are extremely detailed. If a driver has been licensed fairly recently and therefore the files do not contain much information, there can still be up to at least 40 sheets of paper in the file. However, if it is an extremely detailed file, there can be hundreds and hundreds sheets of paper in each file. 

'There are no sections/categories within the files with different types of documents being in mixed order. The file not only contains a range of documents submitted by the driver but also includes documents generated by the Licensing Section.'

It is also quite surprising that in 2018 such records are not computerised - whereby a simple search query of a database would take minutes - and hence clarification was sought, 'are taxi driver records not computerised'?

Rather than answering the request for clarification with a simple yes or no, the Council decided the clarification request should be treated as a new Freedom of Information request giving it a further 20 working days to say yes or no!

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 Leeds Amber taxi's windscreen smashed with block on Florence Mount A hard object was thrown through the back windshield of a taxi in Leeds this morning.

Officers responded to a report of criminal damage on an Amber cab on Florence Mount, Harehills, shortly before 1.30am. Nobody was hurt, West Yorkshire Police's Inspector Darren Brown said this afternoon.

A picture sent in to the YEP shows a concrete object lying over glass debris on the vehicle. No arrests have been made and police currently have no suspects, Insp Brown said.

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DUDLEY

A TAXI driver who helped officers arrest a violent robber who attacked a pregnant woman with a hammer in Dudley has received a West Midlands Police award.

Muhammad Ilyas was driving past when he saw the horror attack which left the woman - aged in her 30s - with a fractured skull in Dixons Green on 28 October 2016.

As a fellow passer-by went to comfort the victim - who had a child with her - Mr Ilyas joined another man in following the attacker to ensure he didn’t escape.

Officers arrived promptly and arrested the 49-year-old attacker where it emerged he had tried to snatch an elderly woman’s handbag just minutes earlier.

He went on to be jailed for a minimum of 10 years at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
Mr Ilyas , aged 25 from Dudley, has been awarded a Chief Constable’s Good Citizens Award in recognition of his bravery and public-spirited actions.
This was recently handed over at an awards ceremony at the force’s Tally Ho! base.

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