This is an odd one, and no obvious explanation - attack happened in October 2018, and five months later no one had been charged, although looks like the perp convicted a few days ago was the one arrested initially and described as a suspect back then - the ages certainly match.
And, as the second piece below states, the council suspended his badge a couple of days after the initial incident and arrest.
And now he's been tried and convicted. Obviously the pandemic will have added to the delay, but still...
Minicab driver found guilty of sexually assaulting female customerhttps://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/19397 ... -customer/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.
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’.
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?”
[Article is strangely structured and reads like the end has been left out, but as far as I can see that's it.]
Minicab sex attacker hasn't held licence since 2018https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/19417 ... ince-2018/A MINICAB driver was stripped of his licence as soon as police told the council he was being investigated for assaulting a female customer.Oxford City Council confirmed that Ali Said’s private hire licence was suspended with immediate effect from October 16, 2018.
It followed 36-year-old Said’s arrest for touching a woman as he drove her home to Abingdon from Oxford in the early hours of October 14.
A spokesman for the city council said: “The Council assisted in the police investigation and provided all requested information and statements.
“The private hire driver licence was never reinstated due to the ongoing police investigation and it expired in 2020.”
[Have deliberately missed out the final few paragraphs of this one, because it's just a rehash of the trial above.]