World

Men convicted of raping woman during Tinder meet-up

September 3, 2024 4:15 pm

Adam Ahamd Kabbout matched with the woman on dating app Tinder before the attack. (Bianca De Marchi/AAP PHOTOS)

A jury has found four men guilty of raping a woman one of them met on Tinder.

The woman said she cried and asked her attackers to stop as three of the men one by one entered the bedroom of her apartment at Belmore, in southwest Sydney, and raped her in April 2022.

She agreed to meet Adam Ahamd Kabbout, 27, after matching with him on the dating app but after letting him into her home and going to take a shower, she found several other men she did not know also in the unit.

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The woman gave evidence during a three-week trial that the men entered her bedroom one after the other and raped her.

A jury on Tuesday found Omar El-Sayed, 26, and Mohammed Ali, 22, guilty on two counts of sexual intercourse without consent in the NSW District Court.

Rami Katlan, 26 was convicted of one count of sexual intercourse without consent but cleared of two aggravated counts of sexual intercourse without consent.

As the crimes’ facilitator, Kabbout was found guilty of four counts of aggravated sexual assault in company but cleared on two other counts.

Family members of the men wept and wailed as the group were taken into custody following the verdicts.

One of the men yelled: “This is not right! I swear we’re innocent.”

It was not in dispute during the trial that El-Sayed, Katlan and Ali all had sex with the woman, but their lawyers told the court she consented.

Documents were tendered to the court during the trial detailing searches made by the woman for what she described as “group-sex material”.

“These searches disclosed very sexually explicit material,” Kabbout’s barrister, April Francis, said.

When questioned about whether the searches were evidence of her sexual interests, the woman replied: “I just wanted to see if the women in the videos were crying the way that I was crying.”

Judge Leonie Flannery told the jury the woman’s searches should not be taken to mean she consented to the sexual activity that was the subject of the trial.

“This is not a court of morals,” she said.

Crown prosecutor Danny Boyle told the jury Kabbout asked the woman if she was interested in having sex with multiple men during their conversations on Tinder and later Snapchat, but she said she was not.

Kabbout encouraged the woman to take part in group sex with the men, to which she replied “tempting but maybe not”, Mr Boyle said.

Ali’s lawyer, Julia-Ann Hickleton, said the woman told police she left her apartment after the assault and was unable to return, but that was contradicted by evidence.

“I suggest that (the complainant) was role-playing the victim,” Ms Hickleton said.

The case has been listed for sentence hearing on October 25.