A REPEAT sex offender who groped a 14-year-old girl when she was on the train home from school has been jailed for nine months.

Mahdi Mohammed pawed the youngster's bottom as he stood next to her in a busy carriage late last year.

Now the 38-year-old faces deportation after previously being told he would be returned to his native Iraq by sentencing judges.

Mohammed, who has been convicted of child sex offences twice in the past, denied the allegation but was convicted following a retrial at Swindon Crown Court.

The young victim told the jury how she caught the train at Trowbridge station on the evening of November 10, heading towards Bradford on Avon.

As she stood in the carriage, which was rammed with Bath Rugby supporters heading for an evening kick-off, she became aware of someone touching her bum.

At first she thought it may have been accidental but when it happened again she realised it was deliberate, and froze with fear.

She said Mohammed gave a scary smirk at her as he touched her, as the train took her home through the darkness.

When she got off she immediately phoned her mum in floods of tears to tell her what had happened.

The police were informed and after scanning CCTV of the journey they were able to grab images of the offender.

Following an appeal in the press in January this year a member of the public on a bus in Bristol recognised Mohammed as the wanted man.

The police were immediately contacted and he was arrested on the vehicle before it reached his stop.

When he was questioned he accepted it was him on the train, saying he had gone to Trowbridge to buy a computer for a friend.

On the journey home he said he had not touched the girl, insisting his hands had been in his front pockets the whole time.

Mohammed, of Bristol, denied sexual assault but was found guilty following a trial.

The jury heard that he had twice been convicted of sex offences against young girls when he was living in Peterborough.

In 2013 he was jailed for 27 months for a series of offences against 13-year-old girls he befriended at a play park, trying to put his hand down the trousers of one of them.

The charismatic man plied them with mobile phone top-up vouchers, and spoke to them on Facebook to gain their trust.

He even spoke to his victims as they made their way to and from school, dressed in their uniform, and then blamed the girls for ‘making themselves available’ to him.

Eight years earlier he was put on an ASBO for making lewd comments to girls as young as ten.