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A taxi driver convicted and jailed for seven years for raping a woman he picked up in Wellington has won a retrial.
The Court of Appeal, in a judgment issued today, quashed the conviction of 55-year-old Abdirazak Yussuf Mussa but prohibited publication of the reasons for its decision.
In November last year Wellington District Court Judge Susan Thomas sentenced Mussa to seven years in prison for two counts of rape and one of abduction with intent to sexually violate.
Mussa had pleaded not guilty to all charges, but was found guilty by a jury in October.
The court had been told that in September 2006 Mussa picked up the woman, who has name suppression, on Courtenay Place around 5.30am.
At the time of the attack the woman was 18.
Instead of driving her home, he took her to his own house where he locked the front door with a deadbolt before raping her twice.
Judge Thomas said Mussa had abused the woman's trust, she was now on medication for depression, could not hold down a job and had lost her "spark".
She said it had also affected the taxi industry because he breached her trust that morning.
- NZPA
