PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon man has been sentenced to life in federal prison after being convicted in separate cases of kidnapping and sexually assaulting two women, including locking one in a cinder block cell.
Negasi Zuberi, 31, was sentenced Friday in federal court in Medford, Portland television station KGW reported. A federal jury convicted him in October on charges of kidnapping, transportation for criminal sexual activity, being a felon in possession of a weapon and attempting to escape from jail when he tried to break the window of his cell in August 2023 to hit.
“This is not a man who deserves to be around others,” one victim said during the hearing. “He shows blatant disregard and lack of concern for human life.”
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The Associated Press generally does not name people who have been sexually assaulted.
“Negasi Zuberi is a serial predator who has committed evil acts. He preyed on women,” Assistant United States Attorney Jeffrey Sweet said before Zuberi was sentenced.
In July 2023, Zuberi solicited a woman to engage in prostitution along Aurora Avenue in Seattle, authorities said. He told the woman he was an undercover officer, showed her a badge, pointed a Taser at her and placed her in handcuffs and leg irons before putting her in the back of his car.
He then drove hundreds of miles to his home in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and locked the woman in a cinder block cell in his garage, the FBI said. After the woman escaped after repeatedly banging on the cell door until it broke open, 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 abducting a woman outside a bar in Klamath Falls. Prosecutors said he threatened her with a Taser, handcuffed her in the back of his car and sexually assaulted her.
Zuberi had pleaded not guilty and continued to claim his innocence during the sentencing hearing.
He waived his right to testify during the eleven-day trial. He tried to testify on the last day of the trial, but was denied because he had previously waived that right.
