Daily Mail
May 2, 2015
A young mother who committed suicide days after she was raped has helped to convict her attacker from beyond the grave.
Masood Mansouri posed as a taxi driver before abducting and raping Ceri Linden as she made her way home from a night out in Broughton, Cheshire last summer.
Mother-of-one Ms Linden, 20, later took a fatal overdose of tablets which her mother has said was a direct result of the ordeal she had been put through at Mansouri’s hands.
Mansouri was found guilty of rape, kidnap and sexual assault today after an emotional police video interview Ms Linden recorded before her death was played to jurors.
College student Ms Linden, from Colwyn Bay, North Wales, was trying to flag down a cab on the night of August 10 last year when she was kidnapped.
She got into a car mistakenly assuming it was a private hire vehicle only for Mansouri, 33, to drive her back to his house and rape her.
Ms Linden later gave a video-taped statement in which she said: ‘I woke up yesterday and realised what had happened and the seriousness of it and it hit me.
‘I felt worthless and helpless and that I needed to tell someone. I don’t feel like this is something which someone should be able to get away with.’
Within seven days of the rape, she was found dead after taking an overdose of tablets.
Iran-born Mansouri from Saltney near Chester denied the charges but was today found guilty at Chester Crown Court.
After the court hearing, Ms Linden’s mother, Eleri, said: ‘It would have been a travesty if this man had got away with it and it’s a relief that justice has been done.
‘What happened has been quite shocking and devastating for us and yet even though she is now dead, he still sought to make out it was her making the running.
‘It has been so obvious to me that they were obvious lies and I was praying the jury would see through them. I was shocked beyond belief when Ceri told me what had happened to her.’