An asylum seeker who roamed the streets of a Scottish town ‘looking for a good time’ has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two young women just moments apart.

Muhammad Sheikhi, labelled ‘predatory’ by prosecutors, stayed at the same hotel as another refugee who had been convicted of a schoolgirl’s rape just months earlier.

He ‘terrified’ and ‘violated’ his victims after they left different nightclubs in Falkirk in the early hours of a Sunday morning, a court heard.

The Syrian refugee, 33, denied having sexual contact with the women, telling police: ‘Only animals would do that publicly.’

As well as the women who were sexually assaulted, a third woman was seen on CCTV being approached by Sheikhi, but went on her way.

The incidents, on last November 30, came hours after major immigration demonstrations were held around the town’s Cladhan Hotel which houses asylum seekers.

Feelings were inflamed after a refugee from Afghanistan, Sadeq Nikzad, 29, was convicted in June 2025 of raping a 15-year-old girl in Falkirk.

Sheikhi - who arrived in Britain by boat claiming he’d faced violence in Syria, been shot four times, and was part of an anti-terror coalition in the country - was being accommodated in the Cladhan by the Home Office.

He sexually assaulted his first victim, aged 22, under a railway bridge as she walked back from the Maniqui nightclub and a short time later, his second, aged 21, in the town’s Bellsmeadow skate park as she walked to a friend’s house from the XOXO nightspot.

Stirling Sheriff Court heard Sheikhi had been ‘roaming round’ the town centre for hours.

He was arrested in his room at the Cladhan at 6.25 the same morning.

Through an Arabic interpreter, Sheikhi, who speaks almost no English, told police he had been on the streets because ‘I am just a young man like everybody else who wants to have a good time’.

A jury of 12 women and three men found him guilty of both sex assaults. They deleted an allegation - that had applied to the skatepark incident only - that the sexual assault was carried out with intent to rape.

After a four-day trial, they took just three hours to return their majority verdicts.

Sheikhi, known as ‘Jan’, a barber in Syria, had pleaded not guilty to both charges.

Sheriff Keith O’Mahony deferred sentence until June 29 for background reports and continued his remand in custody.

He told him: ‘You have been convicted of two very serious charges. As far as this court is concerned you have no previous convictions, therefore as a matter of law I am required to obtain reports before sentencing you.’

Advocate Paul Keenan, defending, reserved mitigation.

Sheikhi showed no emotion but clutched at a tissue as the verdicts were announced and he was handcuffed to a guard and led to the cells.

Jurors heard Sheikhi’s first victim had tried to placate him before the attack, which left her so scared she could ‘hardly talk and breathe’.

She said was walking alone along Kerse Lane, not far from the Cladhan, when she heard footsteps behind.

Despite speeding up, Sheikhi caught up with her, attempted to communicate through a phone app and eventually hugged and kissed her, grabbing her bum and sticking his hand under her skirt.

Asked by the prosecution how the encounter made her feel, the woman replied: ‘Really scared, a bit violated.’

Shortly afterwards Sheikhi approached his second victim as she was also walking alone nearby.

He took her shoes off breaking them in the process and as she tried to get away from him through the skatepark, he pushed her against a tree.

She told the trial he ‘stuck his hand up my skirt and under my dress’ leaving her ‘terrified’.

The woman said he touched her inappropriately and added: ‘I was just shouting at him to stop and I was crying.’

She made her way to a friend’s nearby and ‘pounded’ on his door but her friend, 19, couldn’t find his keys to let her in and instead held her hand through the letterbox while phoning her mother to collect her.

All the time Sheikhi stayed a little way off, watching, holding her shoes.

A doorbell camera showed her crouching, obviously distressed, saying to Sheikhi weepingly: ‘Please can I have my shoes back? I just want to go home, please stop touching me, please leave me alone.’

He only left when her mother arrived to pick her up.

After his arrest, Sheikhi claimed he had just been trying to help her because her shoes were broken.

He said: ‘She was heavily intoxicated - I could have taken advantage of her but I never did.’

The sex pest told investigating officer DC John Thomson he had never sought sexual gratification from either of the women or had any sexual contact with them.

He said: ‘If anybody were to do something like that, you’d chose a private place, not like on the street.

‘Only animals would do that publicly.’

He added: ‘When I was walking whenever I see someone in need of help, I was helping.’

Prosecutor Jamie Hillend labelled Sheikhi ‘predatory’, pointing to ‘compelling similarities’ between his two crimes.

Sheikhi was placed on the sex offenders register with immediate effect.