The notorious Sydney gang rapist Mohammed Skaf has been released on parole after spending two decades in prison for the rape at least six girls in 2000.
Skaf, 38, was filmed leaving Sydney’s Long Bay prison wearing sunglasses and a white jumper on Wednesday morning, after the New South Wales government said it would not oppose a decision to free him last month.
Skaf, who was 17 when he and his older brother Bilal Skaf led a gang of more than a dozen other men who raped at least six girls, some as young as 14, in 2000, will be subject to strict parole conditions following his release.
Conditions of his release include being electronically monitored 24 hours a day, and a ban on entering certain parts of western Sydney.
Skaf was granted parole two years before the end of his 23-year sentence. The NSW parole board said on granting his release from jail in September that waiting until the end of his sentence would have posed an “unacceptable risk”.
“This is the only opportunity to supervise a safe transition into the community in the small window of time that we have left,” the chair of the State Parole Authority, David Frearson, said at the time.
“Release without structure or supervision makes little sense for community protection.”
Skaf had previously been refused bail on a number of occasions, in part, the parole board had said, because of a lack of remorse. In 2017, a pre-release report compiled by the NSW Corrective Services said Skaf “has demonstrated no change in his attitude toward his offences since the beginning of his sentence” and “continues to blame the victims”. Since then he has had three other parole bids refused.
The Skaf rapes were highly publicised following the arrests of Mohammed and other members of the gang in 2000. Nine men were eventually convicted over the crimes, which the sentencing district court judge, Michael Finnane QC, described at the time as “worse than murder”.