Permanent resident to be deported after string of sexual assaults in Montreal area
During one attack, Akra groped a woman on a train station platform and in another he approached a victim while she was reaching for something in her car.
A man in Montreal’s St. Laurent borough who admitted to sexually abusing six women and two girls over a 13-month span will likely be deported following the Quebec Superior Court’s decision to reject his appeal of his 16-month sentence.
Justice Yvan Poulin decided that Sobhi Akra, 41, was to be ordered to report to a provincial jail to begin serving his sentence from June 19, 2023.
After accounting for the time he had already spent in custody, Akra was left with a 12-month prison sentence to serve. He appealed the sentence, citing multiple reasons, including the likelihood of deportation due to the sentence exceeding six months.
Akra is a father of four and was only in Canada for two years before he went on his crime spree.
Akra sexually assaulted four women and a minor between October 2017 and November 2018. He also attempted to sexually assault two other women, and another minor. He did not know the victims and would approach them from behind before groping them. During one attack, Akra groped a woman on a train station platform and in another, he approached a victim while she was reaching for something in her car.
In the cases where he sexually assaulted the victims, Akra groped their buttocks, thighs, hips, crotch or breasts.
During the sentencing hearing before Quebec Court Judge Alexandre St-Onge, the Crown requested a 22-month prison sentence for Akra. Initially, Akra's lawyer argued for a sentence that could be served in the community but later adjusted the request to a prison term of six months minus one day.
Akra argued in the appeal that St-Onge “did not properly weigh the aggravating factors in his case versus the mitigating factors, including his claim that there was no sexual dimension involved in his crimes,” reports the Gazette. This, however, would not convince Poulin who pointed to evidence such as Akra telling one victim “You’re so sexy, I want to pleasure you.”
Poulin agreed with St-Onge’s decision.
“A reading of the judgment as a whole allows us to understand the reasoning underlying the overall decision and to conclude that the sentences imposed on all the charges were just and appropriate,” Poulin wrote. “It appears from the decision that the judge correctly took into account the particular circumstances of each of the crimes while keeping in mind that they were committed in the context of a series of crimes with many similarities.”
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