SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On Sentencing Lord Arthurson made the following remarks in court:

"Ali Chikane, on 24 October 2025 at Edinburgh High Court you were convicted after trial of the crime of rape to injury and danger of life, contrary to section 1 of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009, while on bail.  On that date your bail order in respect of these proceedings was revoked and you were remanded into custody pending the preparation of a criminal justice social work report and risk assessment, which background material is now available.

You are aged 35.  You have a single non‑analogous summary matter on your criminal record in respect of which you were admonished.  I propose to treat you accordingly as, in effect, a first offender.

In the early hours of 5 February 2024 at Murieston Crescent Lane, Dalry, Edinburgh, you assaulted and raped your victim, seizing hold of her neck and pushing her against a wall there and placing your hand around her neck and compressing it, thereby restricting her breathing.  

The complainer herself described you as strangling her and felt her eyes popping. You forced your victim to bend over a shopping trolley which was situated in the lane, pulled her jeans and underpants down and proceeded to rape her there.  Bruising on the complainer’s side and elbow, along with a crescent shaped abrasion or scratch below the hairline on her neck, was all consistent with her account, which the jury plainly accepted, of you forcing yourself upon her as libelled in the charge.  The jury has additionally held that your compression of your victim’s neck was to the danger of her life.

The background report makes clear that you take no responsibility for your offending and view yourself as the victim in this matter.  You have been in the UK since 2013 and have a partner and young child.  The risk assessment component of the report does not quite, in my view, achieve the required threshold for the imposition of an extended sentence.

Your counsel has advanced certain submissions in mitigation on your behalf this morning.  I note in particular what has been said regarding your lack of outstanding cases, your lack of analagous previous convictions, your family circumstances and obligations both here in the UK and in Algeria and the findings on risk as set out in the background report.

In the whole circumstances only a significant custodial disposal is appropriate.  Using violence up to the level of danger to the life of your victim, you raped her at the end of a lane having forced her to bend over a shopping trolley.  Evidence of arguing between you and your victim was led before the jury.  Having heard the whole evidence led at your trial, I have concluded that you assaulted and raped the complainer in anger and by way of the use by you of force, notwithstanding her clear and vocal protests to you to stop, and even as she was crying.  This was a violent, humiliating and thoroughly degrading crime, carried out by you while you, on your own account to the author of the background report, had consumed half a bottle of whisky. Your victim was a vulnerable person. On any view she will have been utterly traumatised by what you did to her on 5 February last year.

Turning now to disposal, standing the nature and considerable gravity of this matter, you will on charge one on this indictment serve a determinate sentence of 8 years  imprisonment.  I attribute 6 months of that period to the bail aggravation libelled.  This sentence will be backdated to the date of your conviction and initial remand into custody, namely to 24 October 2025.

On unopposed Crown motion, the court additionally makes a non-harassment order in respect of you. You will not approach or contact, or attempt so to do, directly or indirectly, in any way whatsoever, the named complainer in this case. This order will subsist for an indefinite period.