A wedding guest raped by two trainee Libyan soldiers based at a British army barracks is suing the Ministry of Defence for compensation, the Guardian has learned.

The man is claiming for negligence and breach of human rights following the attack in Cambridge city centre in October 2014. The two Libyans are serving 12 years in prison for rape.

A second claim has been lodged by a woman over alleged sexual assault by other Libyan trainee soldiers on the same night.

More than 300 cadets were brought for training at Bassingbourn barracks in Cambridgeshire in 2014, at a cost of £13.9m to the UK, to try to help stabilise the country after the fall of the military dictator Muammar Gaddafi.



But many left the barracks unescorted during their stay and one weekend several went into Cambridge where they committed a string of sexual attacks. Others drank heavily, set fires, disabled alarm systems and smashed windows in the barracks, all of which cost £500,000 to repair.

The MoD could be forced to pay tens of thousands of pounds in compensation and the cases look set to increase the government’s embarrassment at the handling of the training programme, which ended with the cadets being flown home and British troops being deployed to keep order.

According to the claimants’ lawyer, Hywel Thomas, they allege the MoD was negligent because officials should have foreseen the trouble the recruits would cause. They also claim their human rights were breached by the government because it allowed the Libyan cadets to treat them in an “inhuman and degrading” way.

The first claimant was raped at night in Cambridge city centre by Moktar Ali Saad Mahmoud and Ibrahim Abugtila who were jailed in May. A trial at Cambridge crown court heard they had “behaved like two hunting dogs who had seen a wounded animal”.



Three other trainees, Ibrahim El Maarfi, Mohammed Abdalsalam and Khaled El Azibi, admitted sexual assaults on four women on the same night and were also jailed. They had stolen bicycles and pedalled from the barracks to Cambridge where they assaulted women at 2am and 8am. The female claimant says she was among their victims.

If successful, the case will increase the cost to the public purse of the aborted programme. In April, the MoD said it had asked Libya to pay the outstanding £11.8m cost of the training, which included £4m on translators. But Libya, where the internationally recognised government is currently challenged by a rival administration, has only paid £2.7m.

An MoD spokesperson said: “We can confirm that compensation claims have been received by the department. When compensation claims are received they are considered on the basis of whether or not the MoD has a legal liability to pay. Where there is proven legal liability, compensation is paid.”

Thomas, of Slater and Gordon, said: “We will be arguing that the Ministry of Defence should have foreseen that harm was going to come to members of the local community as a result of the cadets escaping from Bassingbourn barracks. There had been problems a long time before these attacks took place.



“Our clients are claiming that the MoD was negligent and also will make a claim under the Human Rights Act that our clients suffered inhuman and degrading treatment as a result of the cadets being allowed to escape from the barracks.”

After order broke down inside the barracks, residents in the nearby village of Royston lived in fear of the escaping soldiers. Villagers complained that, despite MoD assurances that the trainees would only be allowed out with escorts, they were finding “escaped” cadets hiding in garden bushes, buying vodka in the local store and “mobbing” a supermarket branch in fatigues and ogling young women. One woman said she opened her front door to find a Libyan standing in her driveway and another hiding under her car.



Police began conducting frequent patrols around the Bassingbourn base, which was reinforced with further troops from 2 Scots, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, who were drafted in “to bolster security and reassure the local population”.

The three cadets who pleaded guilty to sexual assault have completed their sentences of 10 and 12 months and are now applying for asylum from an immigration detention centre, according to Cambridgeshire police.