A WAITER has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for a brutal sex attack on model Cheryl Maddison on the sunshine island of Majorca.
Judges jailed Moroccan Mohamed Fadel el Anssari, 31, for 12 years for the Brit’s attempted murder and 11 years for raping her after finding him guilty of both crimes.
They released their ruling in a written document around midday today.
State prosecutors had demanded a 23-year prison sentence at the end of his three-day trial in Majorca last month.
Petite Cheryl, from Houghton, County Durham, was attacked at around 4am on May 30 2008 as she returned home to her rented flat after working a shift in a bar in the party resort of Magaluf.
She was raped, stabbed repeatedly in the neck, throat and back and left for dead.
She spent two weeks in hospital and doctors said she was lucky to survive.
Fadel was arrested in July 2011 following a lengthy undercover police investigation.
Detectives recovered a cigarette he discarded in the street and found his DNA matched that found at the scene of the crime.
A court in Majorca heard at his trial last month he had twice confessed to raping and stabbing Cheryl and to a second rape on a British tourist in Magaluf in 2010.
Defence lawyer Carlos Portalo had called for Fadel to be acquitted, claiming his privacy had been breached by police when they tested his cigarette butt for DNA.
Brave Cheryl said after attending the trial and giving evidence: “After it first happened, the first year or two, it ruined my life, it changed the person I was.
“I did my best to get back to my normal self and worked away and got my life back to normal and I am a stronger person than I was before.”