A Syrian refugee accused of sexually assaulting two women in Falkirk ignored repeated pleas to be left alone as he followed one of his alleged victims for more than half an hour, a trial at Stirling Sheriff Court has heard.
Muhammad Sheikhi, 23, is alleged to have encountered the 22-year-old woman on Kerse Lane as she left a nightclub at about 2.30am on Sunday November 30 2025. She told the court from behind a screen that she tried to walk past him but he “put his phone in (her) face” and began following her as she walked to a friend’s house. Despite asking him “numerous times” to leave her alone, he continued.
“I told him at the beginning to stop following me, I told him walking through the street, I told him at the skate park to stop following me, at (my friend’s house),” she said. “I told him to leave me alone numerous times.”
Critically, the communication was conducted through Google Translate on Sheikhi’s phone. The woman told the court she typed into the app: “Leave me alone, go away, or I am not coming back with you, (or) something along those lines.” The use of the translation tool – which has previously been noted as risky in UK courts due to potential unreliability – became a central feature of the encounter, with the alleged victim unable to speak directly to him in a shared language and forced to rely on the phone to convey her refusals.
The indictment alleges that during the pursuit Sheikhi seized the woman and pinned her against a tree before sexually assaulting her with intent to rape. He is also accused of a separate assault on a second woman at Kerse Lane and Bellsmeadow skate park, close to the Hotel Cladhan where Sheikhi was staying at the time. The hotel has previously been used to house asylum seekers, and the trial heard that protests had taken place outside it the day before the alleged attacks, on November 29 2025.
Doorbell footage shows woman pleading for her shoes
CCTV footage from 2.40am and doorbell camera clips from 3.14am and 3.27am were shown to the jury. The earlier clip shows the pair walking side by side, with the woman wearing Sheikhi’s shoes while he walked in his socks. She told the court he had placed his shoes on her feet after taking hers off – an act the indictment alleges was done to prevent her leaving.
In the 3.27am clip, the woman is seen crouched on the ground, her voice audibly distressed, repeatedly saying: “Please can I have my shoes back.” She can also be heard saying: “I just want to go home,” and “please stop touching me.” A further clip from 3.44am captures her saying: “Please leave me alone.”
By the time she reached her friend’s house, she was “hysterical”, the court heard. The friend, giving evidence, said he was woken by a “pounding” on his door and the woman “screaming and shouting”. He could not open the door because he had lost his key, so instead held her hand through the letterbox until her mother arrived 20 to 30 minutes later. He described her as “distressed” and “worried”, and said she told him a man had been following her. When asked if the man was still there, he said he could see a man “standing there” across the road.
Snapchat messages the woman sent to a friend in the days following the incident were also presented. One read: “He kept trying to kiss me and touching my toys n arse he was trying to drag me over to his” – with the witness explaining “toys” was probably a typo for “tits”. Another message stated: “I have bruises down my arm.” The friend, asked by defence advocate Paul Keenan whether the woman had mentioned an alleged sexual assault or asked him to call the police at the time, said no. “Maybe she would not want to speak about something like that to me,” the witness said. “Maybe the next day she decided that she would let me know.”
Defence argues shoes given because hers were broken
Sheikhi’s lawyer, Paul Keenan, put it to the woman that his client had given her his shoes because one of hers was broken, and that he had simply been trying to ensure she got home safely. Keenan also argued that “nothing sexual of any type at any time occurred on the evening in question”. The woman rejected this.
Sheikhi denies all charges against him. The trial, before Sheriff Keith O’Mahony and a jury, continues.
