AG v Ali (Royal Court : Sentencing (Criminal) : MacRae) [2025] JRC 328 (5 December 2025)

JUDGMENT THE BAILIFF: 1. Afiz Ali, you are 41 years old and have no previous convictions. You appear before the Court today to be sentenced for offences you committed against two women.

2. The first victim was your former partner who is now aged 32. You were in a relationship with her from August 2021 to June of 2022. During your relationship you got to know her son well. He is now aged 5, and was born of a previous relationship that your former partner had. When the relationship between the two of you came to an end you began to pester your former partner, constantly texting and calling her. She made a report to the police to this effect in January 2023. The police spoke to you and told you that you needed to stop any contact with her. You said you understood this and you agreed to it.

3. The harassment stopped for a few months but resumed in July 2023. From this time onwards there was a mass of communication which was initiated by you and was unwanted so far as your former partner was concerned. You constantly harassed her, sending her photographs and romantic messages which she attempted to ignore. Indeed she stopped replying to the messages in July of 2023. But you contacted her in this way every month from August to the end of 2023 and you resumed messaging her in February of 2024, and by the end of that year there had been a further 22 days of text contact, sometimes more than one text a day. The messages were not only persistent and repetitive, but they were coupled with unwanted contact in person with you frequently appearing in the vicinity of your former partner and her son when they were trying to live a normal life by doing things like going to the beach or visiting a café. This ultimately led to your former partner moving house in June of last year as she did not want you to know where she lived. It can be said in mitigation that the messages themselves were not threatening or abusive.

4. On Valentine's Day this year you approached your former partner in a public place and tried to give her a present which she rejected. Then you tried to put the gift on a pushchair that she was pushing at the time, which she refused. She told you to leave her alone or she would get the police involved in a message she sent to you at the end of March.

5. You tried to contact your former partner through her mother, approaching her in a public place. You began to turn up at her son's school uninvited, you made phone calls, you sat near to her and her son at a restaurant, you followed her in a nightclub. You made her life intolerable and she went to the police again in May of this year. You were arrested, you were interviewed by the police but did not give a truthful account as to your behaviour.

6. Your attitude to your former partner is perhaps exemplified by your comment to the police when you said " I can fuck as many girls as I wanna, why would I go back to a girl I've got problems with ".

7. You were released on police bail after interview on condition that you would have no further contact with your former partner. You at least in spirit broke this condition repeatedly. You followed her to restaurants, you followed her when she was walking with friends, you followed her when she was dropping her son off at school on numerous occasions, and you failed to surrender to custody in accordance with your police bail conditions. You were arrested again, interviewed again, and released on police bail again, with a further condition not to contact her. Again, you breached your bail condition and failed to surrender to custody when required.

8. The second and third offences on the indictment involve you carrying out similar behaviour towards a 17-year-old girl who did not know and had no connection with your former partner. You met her in the Spring of this year when you went to the café where she worked. You began to subject her to harassment, following her, and Count 3 on the indictment relates to an occasion when you hugged her and kissed her when she was trying to get home after a night out. You kissed her on the cheek, she having pushed you away, telling her that you and she would make beautiful babies. When she told you she was 17 you said that you knew this.

9. You began to come to her workplace in order to pester her and appeared when she was on a night out with friends and repeatedly loitered near her place of work.

10. She went to the police on 3 July this year. Your second victim's father went to see her at work and she told her father that you were outside the café. He confronted you and you were extremely abusive to him, saying that you could " fuck any woman any day ", threatening to break his arms, and calling him a " white piece of shit ".

11. When you were arrested by the police and interviewed you made no admissions, you made various offensive remarks and said that a lot of women need " fucking a bit of help ".

12. After you were charged, you were remanded in custody. Initially you pleaded not guilty to these offences. You were sent to this Court on indictment and pleaded guilty when you were indicted. You will receive substantial but not full credit for your pleas of guilty as your victims did not know that you were going to admit your guilt until towards the end of September, two months after your first Court appearance when you entered your not guilty pleas, and subsequent to the Crown serving its full case upon you on 4 September.

13. As the Court has previously observed, there is a public interest in tackling head-on this sort of behaviour which disrespects the lives and wellbeing of other people. It is an aggravating feature that some of this behaviour took place in the presence of a child who was approximately three years old at the time.

14. As the Superior Number said in the case of Coelho v AG [2020] JRC 216 in 2020, there is now a greater awareness in the community of the damaging effects of domestic abuse to victims and the children of victims and a need to deter offenders from similar offending. This has led to penalties for domestic violence and abuse increasing, and the enactment of the Domestic Abuse (Jersey) Law 2022 ("the 2022 Law") We have been assisted by the Victim Personal Statement of your former partner who says that your behaviour made her anxious and scared to leave her home. She became medicated on anti-depressants. Her sleep has been affected. She sleeps better now that you are in prison and she is no longer afraid to go outside. But she is concerned that she will be frightened again when you are released and she seeks a restraining order against you.

15. As to your younger victim, she has also been affected and now is in fear when strangers come into her workplace because you were a stranger to her when you became fixated with her in the way we have described. She has not, owing to her young age, had a relationship with a boy or a young man, and her perception of men has been changed owing to your behaviour. Her trust in men has been diminished. When she sees a man wearing a hat it reminds her of you and startles her. Her sleeping routine has been affected adversely and she has nightmares about you. She feels that her personality has changed and she has become more irritable. And she too seeks a restraining order against you.

16. We have had regard to the Pre-Sentence Report in this case which indicates that your offences were planned, that you take limited responsibility for your behaviour and that you are at moderate to high risk of future domestic violence evidenced by your chronic pattern of offending over a three year period and the risk factors present in your case, particularly your offending against an unknown victim who was much younger than you.

17. The probation officer says your behaviour displays traits commonly associated with obsessive or fixated stalking including a sense of entitlement, control and sexualised intrusion towards your victims, with a resistance to boundaries even when clearly communicated.

18. There is, no alternative to custody in this case. The probation officer says you present a high risk of harm towards future intimate partners or unknown females who may become the focus of your obsessive attention.

19. We are satisfied that the cumulative effect of these offences is that only a custodial sentence can be justified. Plainly there needs to be a consecutive sentence as between Counts 1 and 2 to reflect the fact that you offended against two wholly unrelated victims over a substantial period of time. We give you credit for your guilty plea, for the absence of previous convictions, for your expression of remorse, and take into account the absence of violence and threats in respect of Count 1 of the indictment.

20. The Crown asks for a Domestic Abuse Protection Order in relation to your ex-partner. The statutory criteria for making such an order are met, and we make such an order for five years to run from today on the conditions sought by the Crown at paragraph 58 of its Conclusions, save that the distance in the paragraphs that specify a distance shall be 50 metres. In addition to those extensive conditions at paragraph 58, we also, in accordance with the Crown's application, order you to complete the Engage Programme and Building Healthy Relationships Programme proposed by the probation service either within custody or within 18 months of your release.

21. We also make you subject to the notification requirements under Article 11 of the 2022 Law for 5 years.

22. As to the second victim, we make the restraining order in the terms sought by the Crown at paragraph 70 of its Conclusions, again for the period of 5 years, and we fix the distance at (b) and (c) as being 50 metres.

23. If you go near either of your victims and break the terms of any of the orders that we have made, you will be returned to this Court and receive another prison sentence. Any breaches of these orders are reserved to this Court.

24. As to your conviction on Count 3, you are now subject to the notification requirements under the Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010 and we make an order that five years must elapse until you are permitted to apply to disapply those requirements.

25. The prison sentences we impose, for the reasons we have already given, are as follows: (i) Count 1, 10 months' imprisonment, (ii) Count 2, 5 months' imprisonment consecutive, (iii) Count 3:3 months' imprisonment concurrent to the sentence at Count 2, making a total of 15 months' imprisonment.

26. We order the forfeiture of your mobile telephone subject to extraction of the contacts thereon. Authorities Coelho v AG [2020] JRC 216 Domestic Abuse (Jersey) Law 2022. Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010. Sexual Offences (Jersey) Law 2018. Crime (Public Order) (Jersey) Law 2024. AG v Goncalves [2022] JRC 097 AG v Veloso [2024] JRC 094 AG v MacBrayne [2024] JRC 120 AG v Correia [2024] JRC 237 AG v Mazurke [2024] JRC 293 AG v Tremarco [2025] JCA 093 AG v T [2025] JRC 249 Serious Crime Act 2015 (England and Wales) Page Last Updated: 29 Jan 2026 BAILII: Copyright Policy | Disclaimers | Privacy Policy | Feedback | Donate to BAILII