By GEORGIA EDKINS, SCOTTISH ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR DAILY MAIL AND THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
The small boats migrant who raped a 15-year-old girl after claiming asylum in Britain had lived as a tourist in THREE European cities before arriving in the UK.
Sadeq Nikzad, 29, travelled 4,000 miles from his native Afghanistan to reach the UK and seek asylum in 2021.
Yet a Daily Mail investigation reveals how he travelled through at least THREE safe countries and lived happily as a tourist before arriving in Falkirk, Stirlingshire, where he attacked the schoolgirl yards from his migrant hostel. He was jailed for nine years for rape.
The attack sent shockwaves across Scotland and prompted the country’s first angry protests against asylum hotels.
Extraordinary images suggest Nikzad’s trip through Italy, Germany and France before arriving on British soil was more of a luxury tourist adventure rather than a fight to flee persecution or danger.
The social media images show the migrant posing gleefully outside some of the world’s most famous landmarks, including Rome’s Colosseum, Cologne Cathedral, as he made his way to the UK to claim ‘refuge’.
One picture shows him sporting a North Face puffa jacket, worth more than £300, and smiling in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris as the sun sets.
The migrant was sent to The Cladhan Hotel, Falkirk, which holds about 50 other refugees
Another shows that upon arriving in the UK by small boat, he stopped off at a shopping centre in Basingstoke, Hampshire, where he duly uploaded a post of him wearing a three-piece linen suit.
Chillingly, his flamboyant social media posts have been met by encouragement from friends and family at home, who left comments reading: ‘Good job’ and ‘God bless’.
In June, Nikzad was sentenced to nine years behind bars for rape at the High Court in Livingston and will serve a further three years on licence.
His lawyer claimed he had not been educated about the significant ‘cultural’ differences between the UK and Afghanistan, where child marriage is prevalent.
New details of the rapist’s luxurious journey to the UK have prompted fresh concerns about Britain’s embattled asylum system.
It comes after it was last week revealed a record 111,000 migrants have sought asylum in the UK since Keir Starmer won power, with the highest number ever now staying in Scots hotels.
The migrant shows off a three-piece linen suit after taking a small boat from France to the UK
Nikzad’s brutal rape of a 15-year-old in Falkirk has sparked protests from the local community
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘Keir Starmer’s loss of border control is also a public safety crisis, especially for women and girls.’
He said: ‘This is a sickening case of an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan raping a 15 year-old-girl, and then trying to blame his appalling crime on cultural differences. ‘
He added: ‘It is especially galling that he travelled through multiple obviously safe countries where he could easily have claimed asylum if he really needed to. Men with Afghan nationality are around 20 times more likely to commit sex offences, so this case is tragically not an isolated one.
‘This appalling man arrived illegally by small boat – and this year so far has seen the highest ever number of arrivals, who are mainly men aged under 40.’
Chairman of Migration Watch Alp Mehmet said: ‘The immigration and asylum system is shattered beyond repair. It must be replaced quickly with one that protects our girls and women from lying scumbags like Nikzad.’
And Scottish Tory community safety spokeswoman Sharon Dowey said: ‘People will be appalled at how this now convicted rapist was able to brazenly make his way illegally across Europe.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said it was a ‘sickening case’ and said the UK was in crisis
Chairman of Migration Watch Alp Mehmet said Britain’s migration system was ‘shattered’
‘They will also be sickened by these images of him enjoying himself at world-renowned tourist attractions before coming into the UK.’
Nikzad’s native Afghanistan was the second highest country of origin for UK asylum claims in the year ending June 2025.
Since October 2021, 33,970 Afghans have claimed asylum here.
To be eligible for asylum, the Home Office states: ‘You must have left your country and be unable to go back because you fear persecution.’
It last week confirmed there are currently 6,107 people bidding for refugee status in Scotland, double the number a decade ago, with 1,573 in Scotland-based taxpayer-funded hotels.
Afghanistan, which was taken over by the Taliban in 2021, has been dogged by conflict, humanitarian crises and economic challenges.
Nikzad was jailed for rape in June this year after attacking a Scottish girl in October, 2023
The migrant, pictured at Cologne mosque, shared his journey across Europe to the UK
Yet an image uploaded to Nikzad’s Instagram page in April 2020 appears to show he had great admiration for the country, as he is pictured standing amid the mountains, wearing traditional dress with his hands raised to the sky.
Seven months later, it appears his journey to the UK had begun, after he shared a snap of him more than 3,000 miles away in Europe, outside the Royal Palace of Turin, Italy.
On November 24 of 2020, he then shared a photo of him posing in jeans and a puffa coat outside the Colosseum in Rome.
Between that time and the autumn of 2021 Nikzad uploaded a raft of other pictures taken at spots around Italy wearing smart clothes such as Nike trainers and Nike tracksuits.
He enjoyed boat trips in the sun, and even went to Sicily for a period, the social media images show. By 2021, it appears he had inched closer to the UK, by travelling north to Cologne in Germany.
One image shows him standing proudly outside the famous Cologne Cathedral, wearing his North Face coat, Nike trainers and shades. In another, outside the Cologne Central Mosque, he wore leather loafers and skinny jeans.
Sporting Doc Marten shoes and a North Face cap, Nikzad poses outside Montereau station in Marseille, France
Globetrotter Nikzad is snapped overlooking the Eiffel Tower in Paris as the sun sets
He is then believed to have tracked through to France, where he visited Marseilles in the South and onto Paris. There, he visited the famous shopping street, the Champs Elysees, sharing a picture of himself which showed a lit-up Arc de Triomphe in the distance.
Nikzad also took a number of pictures of himself in front of the Eiffel Tower – one, on the banks of the Seine, the other from a vantage point high up over the city.
According to the High Court in Livingston, Nikzad entered the UK illegally on a small boat in 2021. His intention was to settle here as an asylum seeker with access to taxpayer-funded accommodation, benefits and NHS healthcare.
He is believed to have stayed in England for a period, as an image uploaded in December 2022 shows the migrant posing in a three piece suit in Basingstoke, Hampshire, inside the Festival Place shopping centre.
Images suggest he was later housed by The Home Office in The Cladhan Hotel, in Falkirk. He updated his social media followers with a number of images of him lounging in the establishment’s plush leather chairs and taking-in the town.
His and other asylum seekers’ presence in the area went largely unnoticed until in October 2023, when Nikzad approached a 15-year-old girl near a local pub and proceeded to brutally rape her in broad daylight.
After taking a small boat across The Channel, Nikzad is pictured shopping in Hampshire
He was convicted of rape by a jury at the High Court in Edinburgh after they heard how he went up to the girl and asked for her phone number and whether she had a boyfriend.
He made sexual remarks towards the underage youngster before leading her to the rear of The Courtyard pub and attacking her.
Nikzad’s defence counsel Janice Green told an earlier hearing that her client had not been educated about the significant cultural differences between the UK and Afghanistan.
She highlighted the “cultural barrier” between his home country and Scotland in the sense that child marriage was prevalent in Afghanistan and said: ‘In particular in poorer regions in the north child marriages are nearly 50 per cent.’
She said Nikzad had lived in various locations in the UK since the age of 25 and had applied for asylum, but his claim had lapsed since his remand in custody.
Passing sentence, Judge Morris KC told the accused: ‘I appreciate that you don’t accept that you’ve done anything wrong but the fact remains that you’ve been convicted of an extremely serious sexual offence against a child and I know your counsel has now explained to you that in those circumstances only a substantial custodial sentence is appropriate.’
Nikzad’s crimes have shaken the local Falkirk community, sparking protests outside the hotel
Residents say people have a legitimate right to know who is being housed in their area
The Judge was forced to hurriedly leave the bench as Nikzad, screaming and gesticulating wildly, repeatedly shouted that he was a ‘liar’ before being led to the cells.
Nikzad will serve nine years in custody followed by three years on licence, go on the sex offenders register and at the end of his sentence, be deported.
Angry protests in Falkirk around The Cladhan asylum hotel saw another suspected resident, Saif Aref Ageed, 23, arrested and charged with intentionally exposing himself in a sexual manner to another person, with the intention that the other person will see them, without that person’s consent on August 16.
He was also charged with coercing someone into being present during a sexual activity between June 1 and August 16 at the same hotel.
Ageed was released on bail and the case was continued without plea until September 12.
Connor Graham of Falkirk protest organisers Save Our Future and Our Kids’ Future last night said: ‘The case of Sadeq Nikzad, who brutally raped a 15-year-old girl in Falkirk, shows exactly why local communities are so concerned. People deserve to know who is being housed in their area, especially when those placed there include individuals with such serious criminal backgrounds. Our call is simple – transparency, safety, and putting our communities and children first.’
A Home Office spokeswoman said: ‘While it is our longstanding policy not to comment on individual cases, any foreign national who commits sexual offences against children in our country will face the full force of the law and be deported at the earliest opportunity. Thanks to the new reforms we are introducing in our Border Security Bill, any asylum claims those offenders make will also be automatically denied.’
