On April 11, 2023, Air Force Office of Special Investigations agents met Senior Master Sgt. Shakib S. Rahman inside his first sergeant’s office at his workplace.
The agents arrived prepared to seize electronic devices they believed could contain photographs, videos and other evidence connected to years of alleged sexual abuse involving Rahman’s stepdaughter. Investigators were particularly interested in an iPhone and devices that could have shared or stored its data through cloud synchronization.
By then, investigators had developed a disturbing account of what allegedly occurred inside the Rahman family home.
Investigators alleged that Rahman began entering his stepdaughter’s room at night in 2012, when she was about nine years old. What allegedly began with inappropriate touching escalated over the years, according to facts later summarized by the military judge.
The record states that Rahman had her perform oral sex when she was 11 years old and first had intercourse with her when she was 12.
Investigators believed the abuse continued for years. The stepdaughter reported that Rahman made sexual demands approximately one to three times per week from August 2016 through September 2021.
While stationed in Germany, in 2016, Rahman was accused of recording himself having sex with the victim and his defense attempted to supress this evidence due to it being collected from his devices after he invoked his 5th Amendment right to seek counsel.
Before meeting Rahman, investigators obtained verbal authority to search his person, workplace and vehicles for electronic evidence.
The investigative theory was that photographs or videos allegedly created on Rahman’s iPhone could have been preserved through iCloud or synchronized with tablets, computers and other storage devices. The search affidavit sought devices capable of storing evidence of child sexual assault and suspected child sexual abuse material.
The military judge later found that the affidavit established a sufficient connection between the iPhone and other potentially synchronized devices. Investigators ultimately seized numerous electronic items from Rahman and his residence.
The initial encounter occurred in Rahman’s first sergeant’s office on April 11, 2023. Agents then took him to an OSI detachment for an interview.
Rahman was advised of his rights shortly after the interview began and requested an attorney. The military judge later found that agents continued interacting with him after that request and knowingly used an unwarned statement to obtain access to his iPhone and iPad.
That conduct became the center of extensive pretrial litigation, but it did not end the prosecution.
This article contains redactions and omits information and statements from the investigation that are too graphic to be publicly published. Subscribers are able to read the article in it’s entirety and without redactions.
During an interview with the victim in 2023, she told investgators Rahman would take photos of his REDACTED and tell her to “REDACTED” and to “REDACTED.”
While the videos ceased being recorded after they left Germany, She said the demands continued until June 2022, when she moved out of the family residence. Rahman continued requesting explicit photographs until she ended communication with him in October 2022.
The last photograph was taken from behind REDACTED…was in the Spring of 2022 and REDACTED…on Rahman’s bed.
During an interview with the victim in March of 2023, the victim described the abuse and statements made by Rahman in detail (OMMITTED FROM THIS VERSION).
Air Force OSI agents also recorded two calls between the victims and Rahman. During the first, on the 27th, the victim told Rahman, it was weird doing sexual things with her new boyfriend because she was used to doing sexual
things with him for a long time, according to the Department of the Air Force Trial Judiciary.
He responded he was “sorry” and asked if he could do anything to help. Further, he mentioned he did not mean to mess up anything in her future and that he missed her and still thought about her.
He hoped the sexual relationship was a mutual understanding and not one sided. responded she viewed the sexual relationship as
normal because it occurred for nine to ten years and the Rahman said it was normal for a stepdad and stepdaughter to have a sexual relationship.
She also said it was difficult to have a sexual relationship with others because Rahman was her first sexual partner and he responded she had “permission” to move on in her life and apologized again.
During the second recorded communication, which took place on March 31st, the victim told Rahman she was seeing a therapist and disclosed to them that their relationship was forced, not mutual. Rahman responded by saying “I get it,” and told her that he thought the sexual abuse intercourse “felt mutual.” He then said “if it did become not mutual it was because you
were able to hide it well”.
“I always thought you were having just as much of a good time as I was and if that’s not true, I’m sorry,” he said.
He then asked her not to mention to her therapist who the relationship was with.
The government ultimately took Rahman to a general court-martial on 25 specifications divided among three charges.
Charge I contained nine specifications alleging sexual assault of a child under Article 120b of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Charge II contained eight Article 120 sexual-assault specifications alleging that the victim did not consent to the acts.
An Additional Charge contained eight substantially corresponding Article 120 specifications alleging that Rahman committed the same acts by placing the victim in fear.
The latter two groups represented alternative legal theories involving substantially the same alleged conduct.
An Article 32 preliminary hearing was held Nov. 26, 2024. According to a defense filing, the preliminary hearing officer concluded that the government had not established probable cause for the original eight Article 120 specifications under its nonconsent theory and recommended that prosecutors withdraw them or pursue another theory.
The government held a second Article 32 hearing on Jan. 14, 2025, and presented proposed alternative specifications based on placing the victim in fear. The Additional Charge was preferred Jan. 29, and all charges were referred to a general court-martial the following day.
Referral authorized the case to proceed to trial. It was not a finding that Rahman had committed every offense alleged.
Rahman pleaded not guilty and elected to be tried by a military judge rather than a panel of military members. There was no plea agreement.
His attorneys mounted a broad pretrial challenge to the investigation, the search of his devices, the government’s charging decisions and access to potential evidence.
The defense argued that Charge II and the Additional Charge unreasonably multiplied the allegations because the two sets of specifications covered the same acts under different legal theories.
The military judge agreed that the paired specifications were not aimed at separate criminal acts and could exaggerate Rahman’s criminality or increase his punishment if he were convicted under both theories. The judge granted the defense motion but deferred deciding the appropriate remedy until after findings.
The issue became largely academic when Rahman was later acquitted of all 16 specifications contained in those two charge groups.
The most significant evidentiary dispute concerned the statements and electronic communications obtained during the OSI investigation.
The military judge suppressed Rahman’s statements made after he requested an attorney, including his disclosure of a device passcode. The judge also suppressed text and application messages recovered through an overly broad search of his devices, along with certain evidence derived from those messages.
The court found that investigators lacked a sufficient factual basis to conduct a sweeping search of Rahman’s private communications. The judge concluded that the search authorization failed the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement and that the government could not rely on inevitable discovery, plain view or good faith to admit the messages.
The judge did not suppress the electronic devices themselves. The court found that investigators possessed lawful authority to seize Rahman’s phone and other devices and that properly searchable evidence could have been obtained through independent forensic means.
The case therefore moved forward with the evidence that remained admissible.
Rahman’s general court-martial concluded July 24, 2025.
The military judge convicted him of seven of the nine Article 120b child-sexual-assault specifications.
The guilty findings covered repeated sexual acts committed during periods beginning around June 23, 2015, and continuing through June 22, 2019. Six of the seven convictions retained the phrase “on divers occasions,” establishing that the offenses occurred repeatedly within the charged periods.
For one specification, the judge removed the “divers occasions” language and convicted Rahman of the offense on a single occasion.
Rahman was acquitted of the remaining two Article 120b specifications.
He was also acquitted of all eight specifications under Charge II and all eight specifications under the Additional Charge. The final result was seven convictions and 18 acquittals.
The mixed verdict means Rahman was not convicted of every allegation presented by prosecutors. It also does not reduce the severity of the seven offenses the judge found the government had proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
The military judge imposed separate confinement terms for the seven convictions, ranging from five to 22 years.
Those terms were ordered to run concurrently, meaning Rahman will serve them at the same time rather than one after another. His total adjudged confinement was therefore 22 years.
The complete sentence included:
Rahman was sentenced to 22 years in confinement, a dishonorable discharge and reduction to E-1. The statement of trial results lists no fine, no pretrial-confinement credit and no judicially ordered confinement credit. It also confirms that the case did not involve a plea agreement.
After trial, Rahman and the victim each submitted matters for the convening authority’s consideration.
On Aug. 28, 2025, the convening authority took no action to alter the guilty findings and approved the sentence in its entirety.
Rahman requested that his reduction from E-8 to E-1 be delayed until the entry of judgment. The request was denied based partly on the nature of the offenses and the command’s interest in imposing the punishment when it became effective.
A separate request to waive automatic forfeitures was granted for up to six months, with the money directed to Rahman’s spouse for her benefit and the benefit of his dependent children.
The military judge signed the entry of judgment on Sept. 3, 2025, formally recording Rahman’s seven convictions, 18 acquittals and sentence.
The court-martial process established a narrower period of criminal conduct than the nearly decade-long pattern described in investigative records. But the final judgment still found that a senior Air Force leader repeatedly sexually assaulted a child entrusted to his care over a period spanning mul
Editor’s Note: Coming forward about sexual abuse can require extraordinary courage, especially when the alleged offender is a family member, authority figure, or trusted leader. Survivors may face fear, shame, retaliation, disbelief, and the painful burden of reliving traumatic events through an investigative or judicial process.
The Salty Soldier reports on these cases to promote transparency, accountability, and a clearer public understanding of the gravity of sexual violence. Our coverage is not intended to sensationalize a victim’s experience. It is intended to ensure that serious crimes, institutional responses, and court outcomes are not reduced to statistics or allowed to disappear behind official silence.
We recognize the strength of those who disclose abuse, while respecting that every survivor must make personal decisions about when, how, or whether to share their experience. Our hope is that responsible reporting helps other victims understand that they are not alone, that their experiences matter, and that those entrusted with power must be held accountable when they abuse it.
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