A MINICAB driver has been found guilty of sexually abusing a female customer on the way home from a night out in Oxford.

Ali Said, 36, had denied three counts of sexual assault, claiming that the woman had initiated the contact between them as he drove her back to Abingdon in October 2018.

However, jurors at Oxford Crown Court yesterday convicted him of two counts. He was acquitted of a third charge.

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Said, of Union Street, Oxford, was remanded in custody by Judge Maria Lamb, who ordered the preparation of a pre-sentence report. He will be sentenced on July 22.

During the trial, the jury heard that Said’s victim had been drinking at the Thirst nightclub in Park End Street, Oxford, on October 14 when she began to feel unwell.

She left the club at around 1.15am and got into Said’s white Toyota Prius minicab. Despite not being licensed to pick up fares from the street, as a hackney cab driver would, Said told her to get in the front passenger seat – which he reclined.

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, woke up to find Said touching her. The cab was parked up and she did not know where they were. He was said to have repeated the word ‘sex’ to her.

'Get me to Abingdon'

She tried to sit up and shouted ‘get me to Abingdon’. When they arrived in the town she withdrew money from a cash point and threw £30 on the seat of the cab, the court heard.

Said was swiftly arrested but denied all allegations against him when he was interviewed by the police.

He accused the woman of ‘telling lies’.

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Opening the case to the jury earlier this week, prosecutor Isabel Delamere said: “All the surrounding events appear to be agreed. So, the timings are agreed, the car is agreed, the fact he was the driver is agreed, the route is agreed, the condition of the complainant as she left the club is agreed.

“So, it really amounts to this: was the sexual activity that took place in the taxi because, clearly, there was, was it as she described...in other words without her consent?”

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