Sabir Sharife, 32, spotted his victim after she mistakenly took a bus to Hackney, east London, on her way home from a night out with friends (Picture: Central news)

A woman was raped and stabbed repeatedly in the face and upper body while she was on her way home from a night out in east London.

Sabir Sharife, 32, spotted the woman after she mistakenly took a bus to Hackney, east London, on her way home.

Sharife stalked the woman through the streets armed with a large blade before sexually assaulting her in the early hours of April 9 last year.

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He then stabbed her repeatedly in the face, neck, upper chest and left arm.


The woman bravely managed to fend off the sex beast and passers-by alerted by her screams rushed to help her.



She then collapsed due to loss of blood, the Old Bailey heard.

Sharife stalked the woman through the streets armed with a large blade before sexually assaulting her in the early hours of April 9 last year. (Picture: Google Maps)

The court heard the woman’s palm was almost severed from her fingers as she desperately tried to stop Sharife from cutting her throat and she has been left with permanent facial scarring as well as lasting psychological effects.

Sharife, who arrived in the UK from Somalia more than a decade ago and has indefinite leave to remain, has eight previous convictions for possessing a blade, outraging public decency and was subject to a suspended sentence for affray.

The public decency offence was committed seven months before this attack after a mother with her child spotted him ogling her as he pleasured himself.

He was convicted of affray two months later having punched another resident at the hostel.

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The court heard Sharife was on bail when he committed the present knife attack after demanding money from his mother before threatening to kill her and a fellow resident just three months earlier.

But the matter was dropped when his mother withdrew the allegation.

Judge Usha Karu also noted that there had been two other allegations of rape that were not pursued emerging from various reports.

One concerned a previous partner but the other was said to have been committed against a lone woman on her way home at night who was ‘too distressed’ to pursue the allegation.

Sharife was jailed for life at the Old Bailey (Picture: Google)

A separate complaint about his sexual behaviour was lodged at the hostel five days before the latest attack.

Judge Karu told Sharife the ‘brutal and sustained’ assault as well as his ‘serious escalation in offending’ justified a life sentence in his case.

He was ordered to serve a minimum of 13 years behind bars before he can be considered for release.

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The judge said mistakenly getting the wrong bus had ‘the most ill-fated consequences’ for the woman.

She told Sharife: ‘The decision to get off the bus where she did is one she will regret all her life. She fought hard and that is when you pulled out the knife.

‘She believed you were going to rape her and she pleaded with you repeatedly not to hurt her. She was prepared to submit as long as you didn’t hurt her.



‘She said in her video interview that ‘the next thing I seem to remember is the shock of realising he was going to hurt me anyway’.’

Prosecutor Sarah Campbell earlier told jurors: ‘I’m afraid the facts of this case will send a chill down the spine of anyone of you who has travelled home late at night in London.

‘In the early hours of 9 April this year just before 3.30am a woman was attacked by a man who had armed himself with a knife who had followed her.’

Sharife was prowling close to where he was staying at the Shuttleworth hostel in Well Street when he first spotted her.

CCTV footage captured him following the woman onto a night bus and leering at her on the top deck as they travelled north of the capital.

Once she got off a passer-by asked the victim if Sharife was bothering her when he saw him tailing her in a ‘creepy way’.

The victim claimed she was okay when he followed her through Brooke Road in Stoke Newington.

But as she turned the corner into Rectory Road the pervert grabbed her by the jeans and pulled out the knife.

‘She thought he was going to rape her, he drew it across her throat connecting with her chin,’ added Ms Campbell.

She was stabbed several times before she managed to break free from his grip and scream for help.

Ms Campbell said his intent ‘can only have been to kill her’, adding: ‘He only didn’t do it because of the resistance that she was able to put up.’

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Sharife tried to dump the knife and the jumper he was wearing before returning home just after 4am.


His DNA, CCTV footage and Oyster card evidence linked him to the attack, but the victim could not identify him and admitted she was drunk.

Sharife insisted that it was a case of mistaken identity and denied the charges.

But a jury rejected his version of events and convicted him of attempted murder, sexual assault and having a bladed article.

Sharife, of no fixed address but from the Hackney area, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 13 years.

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