Mohamad Sh. was convicted of rape in 2020 and was supposed to be deported, but a new asylum request allowed him to stay in the country. In June 2025, he committed another rape against a Nepali national.
The County Court in Zagreb has non-final sentenced 38-year-old Pakistani national Mohamad Sh. to a single prison term of six and a half years for rape and unlawful deprivation of liberty of a Nepali national. What is particularly concerning is that he is a repeat offender who had already been convicted of rape and was supposed to be deported from Croatia after serving his sentence. Instead, a new asylum request allowed him to remain in the country.
The sentence will include the 14 months already spent in pre-trial detention, and the convict will remain behind bars until the verdict becomes final. If the High Criminal Court upholds the verdict, Mohamad Sh. could remain in prison until the end of 2031.
According to the verdict, the crime occurred on June 2, 2025. The individual from Pakistan contacted the woman from Nepal and offered to help her find employment. After allegedly conducting a job interview with her, he took her to a property where he was living illegally near Zagreb. When the woman expressed her desire to leave, he locked the front door, hid the key, and refused to let her out.
The court established that he then forced her into sexual intercourse, despite her resistance and pleas for him to stop. During the attack, he threatened her, claiming he had committed a murder in Pakistan. Nevertheless, the victim managed to reach her phone and send her location to a friend and an influencer from Nepal. After the police received the tip-off, they arrived at the address, and the suspect attempted to flee by jumping out of a window but was quickly apprehended. A search of the scene revealed several used condoms.
Mohamad Sh. had already been sentenced to four years in prison for a rape committed in 2020 at the Porin Foreigners Reception Center. After his release from prison in July 2024, he was taken over by Ministry of Interior officers to execute the deportation order. However, he filed a new request for international protection, i.e., asylum.
Although his application was rejected, the procedure lasted long enough that, after the legal stay limit in the Detention-Deportation Center expired, he was returned to the Porin reception center. After his asylum request was again rejected, he filed an appeal, and while the procedure was ongoing, he remained in Croatia. It was during this period, according to the non-final verdict, that he committed the new rape.
At trial, he denied guilt, claiming he was reported due to a disagreement over job placement mediation. The court dismissed his defense as unconvincing and also found that he had attempted to delete location messages from the victim's phone. The court highlighted as a particularly aggravating circumstance that he had been previously convicted.
