LONDON: A Saudi student in the UK who saved a woman from an attempted rape has been hailed for his extraordinary heroism and bravery by a judge, police and members of the public.

Hamzah Al-Bar, 24, rushed to the defense of the woman on Dec. 30 last year as he walked to a supermarket in Sunderland.

He spotted Ian Hudson, 42, trying to carry out the attack, and phoned the police but his battery died.

Al-Bar approached Hudson, who tried to flee. The Saudi student, then aged 23, tackled and pinned him down despite being punched in the face. Al-Bar then alerted two passersby who phoned the police.

Hudson was convicted and jailed last month following a trial at Newcastle Crown Court. He had earlier admitted a charge of exposure and assaulting a police constable.

In court, the victim, who was kept anonymous, said she believed Hudson would have “killed” her had Al-Bar not come to her rescue.

The Saudi student later recalled the events of that night during an interview with Northumbria Police, whose investigating officers nicknamed him “Hero Hamzah.”

He said: “I had the chance to step in and help somebody that needed help. Honestly, it was a routine journey to Tesco (supermarket) for me. Tesco is about less than a five-minute walk from where I live. So, this all happened literally right outside my building.

“Usually I also will have my earbuds on listening to music, especially when I’m walking alone. But this day, my phone was low on battery and I’d just impulsively decided to leave the house.”

Al-Bar said the first thing that caught his attention was a scream. He spotted Hudson and the victim at a bus stop across the road.

After his phone died, preventing him from staying on the line to the police dispatcher, he said he was faced with a decision.

“I need to do something. I need to decide what I’m going to do. And so I just ran up to the bus stop and I screamed and I shouted at him, ‘Stop.’

“He looked at me and he instantly started running away. And I ran after him and I caught up to him relatively quickly. And as I turned him around, he instinctively punched me in the face,” Al-Bar added.

“And at the time, obviously with all of the adrenaline and everything that I was kind of feeling, I didn’t feel it at all. It didn’t hurt me.”

Hudson “knew that what he had done was despicable and he was trying to run away from the consequences as urgently as he could,” said Al-Bar. “Ultimately, I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

Hudson was sentenced to nine years in prison in November, and will remain on the sex offender registry for life.

Hayley McIntosh, a detective constable, described the offenses that Hudson inflicted on the victim as “truly horrific.”

It followed a trial in June in which he was convicted of two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, common assault, non-fatal strangulation, sexual assault and attempted rape.

His victim read a statement that said: “I didn’t know there was evil out there like him but now I have seen evil, and it terrifies me. That night I honestly believe he would’ve killed me if the witness hadn’t come along.”

The judge who sentenced Hudson, Recorder David Gordon, formally commended Al-Bar for his “extraordinary courage and public-spiritedness.”

He added: “Mr. Al-Bar intervened without hesitation to prevent the rape of the complainant who was in clear and immediate danger.

“In doing so, he not only placed himself at personal risk, but was in fact assaulted by the defendant as he restrained him until the police arrived.”

Al-Bar’s actions had “undoubtedly prevented an even more serious offense from being carried out and ensured that the defendant could be swiftly brought to justice,” he said.

The Saudi student said Hudson had “hurled racial insults” at him while being detained, in an attempt to “shift the perception of the situation to make it seem like I had attacked him for no reason.”

He added: “I understood that at some point I’m going to need to appear in court. That was going to happen regardless. But I knew how important my testimony would be.

“I was the only one that actually witnessed anything happen. There was nobody else that could corroborate what the woman would say.”

Al-Bar said: “When I had went to court, the detective kept telling me that ‘the victim wants to meet you’ … And I was very willing to meet her because given the blur of everything, I didn’t even remember her properly and I wanted to meet her.

“It was amazing in a way because I had so many emotions going on at the time. But I was also just greeted by so much gratitude.

“We were focusing on the brighter side: The fact that she was safe now, she had been saved from a worse outcome. And that was due to me.”

Al-Bar said he felt a sense of “divine timing” surrounding the events of that night. “She was fighting him and she was fighting very vigorously, fighting for her life, trying to survive. And she was fighting for at least five minutes, if not 10 minutes, before I had actually arrived. And just hearing the amount of strength she had to push through was amazing, honestly,” he added.

“But ultimately, he’s a man overpowering an older, vulnerable lady. And right when she had given up, she told me, in her mind, that she thought, ‘This is where I die.’ That’s when she saw me.

“The world is inherently light and dark. And as much as there’s goodness within people and us as a society, that darkness still is very apparent. And the truth is it does exist. And sometimes it will just hit you straight in the face … I was there at the right time. I was there when I needed to be there. And I did exactly what I needed to do.”

The case has drawn widespread attention on social media, with Britons and Saudis from all walks of life celebrating Al-Bar for his bravery.

On Facebook, where the Northumbria Police account highlighted the Saudi student’s actions in an interview, one commenter said: “What an amazing human you are. If only all men were like you then this world would be a much safer place for women, girls, and children. I hope the victim got the support she needed after this awful experience.”

Another wrote: “In tears watching this — that brave lad didn’t know if the attacker had a knife/gun/any weapons and still risked his life. I hope Hamzah has an amazing future ahead. We need more Hamzahs in this world. Good lad.”