A UNIVERSITY student from Newport who imprisoned a young woman in his car and assaulted her has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Vibinmon Joseph, 25, held the woman, from Luton, inside a locked car which he parked overnight in a supermarket car park in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

The offences happened after Joseph embarked on a campaign of “possessive and obsessive behaviour”

towards the woman, who was a student living in Luton.

Joseph was sentenced at St Albans Crown Court following a trial earlier this year when he was found guilty of false imprisonment, assault occasioning actual bodily and common assault.

Joseph, a student at the University of Wales, was cleared of raping the woman in his car as well as four offences of sexually assaulting her.

He was cleared of kidnapping her and a second charge of common assault.

Following his conviction in September Joseph, of Commercial Road, Newport, Gwent, was remanded in custody and brought back to St Albans Crown Court on Friday to receive his sentence.

During the trial, the jury were told that Joseph became obsessed with the victim after meeting her last October when she came to the UK to study.