A MAN who raped an 18-year-old man in the centre of Newport was jailed for nine years at Cardiff Crown Court.

Altaf Ali Raza, 23, told his victim: "I'm not going to mug you. I just want to have sex with a white person, I've never had it before."

Raza, of Harrow Road, Newport, forced the teenager to ensure a sustained and "appalling" assault before he was interrupted by the arrival of a police van.

The attacker, who has a wife in Pakistan, initially asked the man for a lighter as he was walking down Commercial Street in the early hours of the morning of August 18 this year.

Telling him he was going in the same direction he began walking alongside the man.

When the victim tried to leave, Raza told him to walk across the Millennium Bridge telling him if he did not there would be "trouble".

Assuming that the defendant's intention was to rob him and afraid he had a knife, the victim went with him intending to offer his phone without a struggle.

But after leading the man into a dark alley near Rodney Parade, the attacker grabbed him around the eyes and pulled him backwards when the man attempted to escape.

He then raped the man as the victim shouted for help, punching him when it was clear he wouldn't agree to his demands.

The victim was described in court as a "decent young man". Just before meeting Raza he had stopped when a girl asked him for help, letting her use his phone and even giving her a shirt as she was cold.

The court heard that following the attack he had suffered from nightmares and found it difficult to go out alone.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, his mother said she just wanted her son back the way he was.

Robin Shellard, defending, said his client offered an "abject" apology and offered as mitigation his guilty plea. He added that Raza's family had cut off ties with him since the attack.

Raza appeared by videolink to hear his sentence.

Judge Stephen Hopkins QC told him: "This was appalling behaviour. You treated a perfectly decent young man as no more than a sexual object to satisfy your perverted lust.

"At the arrival of the police van you pulled your clothes up like the coward you are and ran off.

"No doubt, quite wrongly, the young man feels shame for what you did to him.

I have come unequivocally to the conclusion that there's a real risk by you of the commission of further offences and the causing thereby of serious harm to members of the public."

Raza was given a 13 year extended sentence which includes a nine year prison term. He was given nine years in prison for two counts of rape, five years in prison for sexual assault and two years in prison for assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

All the sentences will run concurrently.