Drug-smuggling bigamist Amir Mohebbi jailed for rape

Amir Hoshang Mohebbi, whose refugee status has been consistently rejected by New Zealand authorities over the past 28 years, appears in Auckland District Court to be sentenced for rape and threatening to kill his victim. Photo / Jason Dorday

A drug-smuggling bigamist who New Zealand authorities have been trying to deport since his arrival as a self-proclaimed refugee nearly 30 years ago has been jailed for rape and other charges.

Amir Hoshang Mohebbi, 52, was first ordered sent back to Iran in 1998 after losing an asylum claim one year after his arrival.

However, he short-circuited the system after refusing to apply for an Iranian passport and was at one point deemed New Zealand’s longest-ever remand prisoner.

In 2018, he was sentenced to a 10-year prison sentence for the importation of methamphetamine. He was still on parole when the latest crimes occurred in 2021.

“I hope you feel as small and terrified as you made me feel,” his victim said through tears as she confronted him today in Auckland District Court.

Mohebbi covered his face throughout the statement and for the vast majority of today’s hearing, which was attended by several media outlets and more than a dozen supporters for the victim.

The young woman was highly intoxicated after joining her friends at a bottomless brunch in Mt Eden in June 2021 when Mohebbi, a stranger, raped her at his Auckland Central apartment while she was in and out of consciousness.

At one point, Judge Kirsten Lummis pointed out today, the victim began to cry while being violated.

“Your response was to shush her,” the judge said.

Mohebbi later threatened to kill the woman if she told anyone. It took months for authorities to identify him via a DNA match.

“You made every day a living hell,” the woman said today, describing the terror of not knowing if she had been given a disease or impregnated as well as the terror of knowing he was somewhere out there - not yet arrested.

“I rarely have nights where I don’t suffer from nightmares.”

Amir Hoshang Mohebbi, 52, was first ordered sent back to Iran in 1998 after losing an asylum claim one year after his arrival. Photo / Jason Dorday

As a result, she’s found herself fearful of living in New Zealand and has often travelled overseas. She still feels triggered living in Auckland even knowing he’s now in prison, she said, explaining that she can no longer drink with friends or date due to her ongoing anxiety.

During a trial in February, jurors were shown CCTV footage in which the woman was seen leaving a bar without her friends around 4.24pm.

Mohebbi told jurors that he met the woman, about 30 years his junior, outside the Pitt St fire station and he took her to his nearby apartment after she expressed interest in a three-way sexual encounter.

His account of what followed was not credible to the jury nor the judge.

“Your evidence sounded like a sexual fantasy of what you wished had happened that day,” Judge Lummis said.

“She was simply in no position to consent due to her level of intoxication... You took complete advantage of the situation you found yourself in.”

She ordered a sentence of eight years’ imprisonment.

Much of Mohebbi’s long and strange history in New Zealand was outlined in a 2022 Immigration and Protection Tribunal decision rejecting his latest asylum appeal.

As a Catholic convert, his life would be in danger if he was to return to Iran, he has repeatedly argued with little success.

He was convicted in 2000 of bigamy and making a false oath upon his entry into New Zealand, failing to mention that his first marriage - to a woman he married in Iran in 1994 - had not been dissolved.

One year later, he was convicted of breaching a protection order that had been granted to his second wife.

In January 2003, he was ordered deported again but again refused to renew his Iranian passport. Parliament quickly amended the Immigration Act so that he could be held in custody until the passport issue was resolved.

He was eventually released from Mt Eden Prison on bail in 2007 after earning the dubious distinction at the time as the longest-detained remand prisoner ever in New Zealand. He had been in custody for three years and 10 months.

A High Court judge said at the time that his continued detention had become “arbitrary” and therefore breached the Bill of Rights.

Amir Mohebbi, photographed at his South Auckland home in 2007, upon his release from Mt Eden Prison following nearly four years as a remand prisoner refusing deportation orders to Iran. Photo / Dean Purcell

He was finally granted a residence visa in 2010 based on his relationship with a new partner.

But court records from his 2018 methamphetamine sentencing showed he began importing the drug as early as June 2010, when Customs intercepted 81.2g of methamphetamine hidden inside a photo frame that had been shipped from Iran.

He was released from prison on parole in November 2020 and was issued a deportation notice the following July but remained in the community while appealing the order.

“Since his release from prison, the appellant states that he has done everything he can to move forward with his life and not to repeat his previous mistakes,” the tribunal noted in its 2022 decision.

“He engaged with all his supports until he started employment and complied with parole requirements, including reporting to his probation officer every two weeks and passing drug tests.

“The appellant is remorseful for his offending. He states that he has no excuse and apologises to the New Zealand public for what he has done. He states that he has learned a lot about himself in prison and during the programmes he completed, and he will never offend again.”

The decision was published in April 2022. He had already raped the victim one year earlier.

Defence lawyer Dale Dufty said his client developed a drug addiction after a back injury at work. He described Mohebbi as having had “an unfortunate run” since his arrival in New Zealand, including a brutal attack while at Mt Eden in the mid-2000s.

His client’s mental health appears to have deteriorated after 28 years of stress about always-pending deportation orders, he suggested.

“This may have led him to an anti-social and less rational way of thinking,” Dufty said.

Auckland District Court Judge Kirsten Lummis. Photo / Alex Burton

Crown prosecutor Daniel Becker argued that Mohebbi’s background might have contributed to his previous drug offending, but it had no nexus with the rape charges.

Mohebbi faced up to 20 years’ imprisonment after being found guilty following a February trial. In addition to rape, he was convicted of indecent assault, unlawful sexual connection and threatening to kill.

She declined to uplift the sentence for his prior drug offences because they were not relevant but did order an uplift for having offended while on parole.

She noted that Mohebbi has been assessed as being a high risk of re-offending.

She apologised to the victim for any part the court played in the “extreme” delay for the case, acknowledging that she had felt re-traumatised by the justice process.

Judge Lummis said the offending was aggravated by the victim’s vulnerability. Her much younger age and obvious intoxication should have given Mohebbi pause, she said.

“This wasn’t sexual activity she engaged in, in any way,” the judge said. “It was very much a one-way street.”

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.

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