CONVICTED gang rapist Bilal Skaf has no friends in jail and is at risk of being killed by other prisoners, a Sydney court has been told.Skaf and an associate, who can be referred to only as AA, were convicted in the NSW Supreme Court in April over the August 2000 pack rape of a 16-year-old girl in Greenacre's Gosling Park, in Sydney's west.
During the pair's sentencing submissions today, Skaf's lawyer, Peter Zahra SC asked acting Justice Jane Mathews to take into account that his client, already serving a 28-year sentence for other offences, was approaching nearly six years in custody. He said Skaf, who has been convicted twice of the Gosling Park attack, had "no friends" in prison and faced "onerous" and "very dangerous" conditions. "There are prisoners that want to kill him - and they are not from any particular ethnic group," Mr Zahra said.
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Acting Justice Mathews said she would sentence the pair within the next two weeks, but did not fix a date.
Skaf, now 24, was convicted in 2002 on two counts of aggravated sexual intercourse without consent in company, while AA was found guilty of being an accessary before the fact. They were among up to 14 men allegedly involved in the attack.
Skaf made NSW legal history when he was sentenced to a record 55 years in jail for leading a string of vicious gang rapes - including the Gosling Park attack - in 2000. But the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in 2004 quashed Skaf and AA's convictions over the Gosling Park attack and ordered a retrial after it was revealed that, during the trial, two jurors conducted their own investigations at the scene of the rape.
Skaf remained behind bars while awaiting retrial, with his sentence for other sex offences having been reduced to a maximum 28 years on appeal. AA's overturned conviction and a subsequent appeal resulted in his jail term for the same series of attacks being reduced from 32 to 19 years.