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(Image: NC)

The shocking case has sparked outrage in Finland after the country’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal for a harsher sentence for the asylum seeker.

The man – named in Finnish media as Juusuf Muhamed Abbudin – lured the youngster to the yard of a dated apartment block and in the city of Tampere in 2016.

But the 23-year-old was given a sentence of just three years after both the Pirkanmaa District Court and the Appeal Court in the city of Turku convicted him of the lesser charge of aggravated sexual abuse in 2017.

Prosecutors then took the case to the Supreme Court in a bid to have a tougher sentence imposed.

But judges ruled the incident was not classed as rape, saying the young girl was not forced into the sexual act or overcome by fear.

Abbudin, who also sent explicit messages to the child, was ordered to pay her €3,000 (£2,650) in compensation.

Critics of the decision are now calling for much tougher sentences for child abusers.

Tuula Tamminen, a professor of Child Psychiatry at the University of Tampere, said the young girl would have been unable to give consent as she would not have fully understood what was happening.

Last year, National Coalition Party MP Kari Tolvanen, called for harsher sentences, saying: “The amendment would introduce harsher sentences for serious sexual offences against children overall.

“In my view, that is fully justified, for example in light of a child’s vulnerability, even if the act does not meet the threshold for rape.”