An Oregon man has been sentenced to life in federal prison after being found guilty of kidnapping and sexually assaulting two women, including locking one of them in a concrete block cell.
Negashi Zuberi, 31, was sentenced Friday in federal court in Medford. Portland television station KGW Reported.
A federal jury in October convicted him of kidnapping, transportation for criminal sexual conduct, being a felon in possession of a weapon, and an attempted jailbreak in August 2023 when he tried to break through a cell window. I put it down.
“This is not a man who deserves to be with other people,” the victim said during the hearing. “He shows a blatant disregard and lack of consideration for human life.”
The Associated Press typically does not publish the names of people who have been sexually assaulted.
“Negashi Zuberi is a serial predator who did bad things. He hunted women,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sweet said before Zuberi was sentenced.
According to authorities, Zuberi solicited prostitution from a woman on Aurora Avenue in Seattle in July 2023.
The man told the woman he was an undercover agent, showed her his badge, pointed a Taser at her, handcuffed her and put a leg iron on her, then forced her into the back seat of his car.
The FBI said he then drove hundreds of miles to his home in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where he confined the woman in a concrete block cell in his garage.
After the woman repeatedly banged on the cell door until she broke it and fled, Zuberi fled and was arrested in Reno, Nevada.
Federal authorities later linked him to a second kidnapping in May 2023, in which he was convicted of kidnapping a woman outside a bar in Klamath Falls.
Prosecutors said he threatened her with a Taser, handcuffed her to the back seat of his car and sexually assaulted her.
Zuberi has maintained his innocence and continued to do so during the sentencing hearing.
He waived his right to testify during the 11-day trial. He attempted to testify on the final day of the trial, but was refused because he had previously waived his right to do so.