Adil Rahman, 23, who had a history of beating up his new bride, tracked her down by showing her photograph around Asian communities in northern cities after she ran away from their Manchester home.

He struck lucky in Sheffield and found his wife out shopping near a supposedly secret women's refuge.

Rahman dragged his wife off the street, took her back to Manchester and assaulted and raped her at a friend's home after showing her a picture of a machine gun on his mobile phone.

Prosecutor Sarah Wright told Sheffield Crown Court that Rahman found his wife in the city last May.

When arrested by police Rahman told them: "I will do my six or seven years and then I will murder her."

He later told officers she was a "dead bitch".

His wife, who now has a new partner, has since had to relocate to another part of the country and change her name.

Jobless Rahman, of Crumpsall, Manchester,
was convicted of two rapes, kidnap and false imprisonment after a five-day trial in Sheffield last December.

He was also convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two offences of common assault.

He was given an eight-year indeterminate sentence for public protection by Judge Trevor Barber who ordered he serve a minimum of four years before he is considered for parole.

Under an indeterminate sentence, a minimum tariff for incarceration is handed down but the defendant must satisfy the authorities that he or she is fit for release and does not pose any threat to the community.

The judge said Rahman beat and emotionally abused his wife during their short marriage and she fled to Morocco. But she was persuaded to return to Britain by his family and faced further repeated violence at her husband's hands.

She fled to Sheffield but he traced her and dragged her off the street and imprisoned and raped her twice.

The judge told Rahman: "You pose a significant risk of causing harm to members of the public and your wife in future."

After the hearing Det Sgt Neil Vaughan, of South Yorkshire Police, who headed the inquiry, said: "Rahman regarded his wife as his possession and nobody was going to slight him.

"He has not shown one iota of remorse."

Mr Vaughan said the couple had known each other for a few years before they got married but even before then Rahman inflicted violence on his partner and she was kept as a "virtual slave".

Eventually his wife had enough of the beatings and fled to a women's refuge in the north-west and then on to Sheffield. Mr Vaughan said: "Rahman presents a definite danger to society and fully deserves the sentence.

"He has put this woman through a horrific ordeal."