A Canadian engineer with ties to the Saudi monarchy was sentenced to ten years prison today for raping an unconscious woman in his suite at The Plaza last year.
Mustapha Ouanes, 60, tried to escape sentencing by insisting he had a heart ailment that could kill him in prison. That argument was rejected by both the judge and the victim herself, the daughter of a decorated war hero who also has a heart condition.
“He doesn’t’ ask for any special treatment,” the 28-year-old former bartender told her attacker during an emotional sentencing statement. “He waits at the VA like anyone else. I don’t know what makes you feel so special.”
The woman was raped after she and her female friend passed out after a night of carousing with Ouanes, who the women had wrongly figured for a harmless, courtly gentleman.
“I felt I was surrounded by darkness and couldn’t escape from it no matter how hard I tried,” she remembered aloud. “This is something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.”
Ouanes had insisted that the sex was consensual, a claim rejected by a Manhattan Supreme Court jury in February.