Crime & Safety

Convicted Rapist With Laguna Beach Ties Given Reduced Sentence

Ali Achekzai was found guilty of assaults in 2002 and 2004 involving women he met at Serra's Bar and Grill.

An appellate court panel today upheld the conviction of a man who raped two women and fondled and attempted to sexually assault a third, but determined that his sentence of 61 years to life was too long.

The Fourth District appellate panel concluded that Orange County Superior Court Judge Daniel Didier punished Ali Achekzai twice for the same crime, so reduced the defendant's original sentence to 56 years to life behind bars.

Achekzai, 35, eluded authorities for six years until his capture in Austria. His arrest came largely because a Tustin police detective, on a hunch, had Achekzai's DNA run through an Interpol database. It was the first Interpol- related DNA hit in California, according to the prosecutor on the case, Robert Mestman.

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Achekzai fondled and attempted to sexually assault a 24-year-old woman while she was passed out in a limousine parked near the since-closed Serra's Bar and Grill nightclub, which was at 859 Laguna Canyon Rd., on Oct. 26, 2002.

Achekzai met another woman at the same nightclub on Jan. 31, 2004. Later that evening, after they had gone their separate ways, he drove up alongside the 21-year-old victim and convinced her to pull her car into a Jack In the Box parking lot in Tustin, where he raped her in her vehicle, Mestman said.

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Achekzai also raped a then-21-year-old woman on May 3, 2004, near Mount Soledad in San Diego County, Mestman said.

Arrest warrants for Achekzai were first issued in October 2004, but the Afghan native fled the United States before he could face charges here, Mestman said.

In April 2009, Achekzai was accused of rape in Salzburg, Austria, but those charges were later dropped and he was extradited in August 2010 to Orange County, where he was convicted in December 2011.

-- City News Service


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