Government 'looking at every route' to deport grooming leader

ByJonny Humphries

North West

A government minister has said officials are "looking at every route" to have the leader of a Rochdale grooming gang deported.

Shabir Ahmed was jailed for 22 years in August 2012, but his victims were this week told he was set to be released from prison on licence today.

They were also informed, despite earlier promises, that a 55-year-old law barred the government from deporting him.

But today Labour Minister for Skills Baroness Jacqui Smith said the government was "doing everything we can to get this guy out of the country".

Ahmed, now 73, held dual British and Pakistani citizenship at the time he was convicted.

He was stripped of his British citizenship in court and it was expected that he would be sent back to Pakistan after serving his sentence.

But his victims have been told that, under the Immigration Act 1971, any Commonwealth citizen who arrived in the UK before 1973 and had been here for at least five years cannot be deported.

Labour MP Jim McMahon, who represents a constituency in Oldham where some of the abuse occurred, earlier told the BBC that the 1971 act was intended to protect Commonwealth citizens who had come to the UK for a better life and who contributed to the country.

"It was not designed to give a free pass to a child rapist," he said.

"I think we need to anchor it in what the law was intended to do and not the way it has been abused today."

McMahon said the government wanted to "close the loophole" in the 1971 act, but said legal advice was needed to say whether any change could apply retrospectively and therefore allow Ahmed to be deported.

On Wednesday Andy Burnham, who is expected to become Labour leader and therefore prime minister later this month, confirmed he wanted Ahmed to be removed from the country.

Posting on X, he wrote: "Like everyone, I want this vile criminal out of the country. Victims must come first.

"I will ask the home and foreign secretaries to review all possible options - and they should consider nothing is off the table."

The rapist, who was known as 'Daddy' by his victims, was the ringleader of a group of nine men who systematically groomed and sexually abused teenage girls.

The men gained the trust of their victims offering takeaway food and cigarettes, and later plied them with alcohol before repeatedly raping them.

A jury heard Ahmed had treated one victim as a "possession" - and that the girl had been abused on "an almost weekly basis".

One survivor, identified as 'Ruby' to maintain her legal right to anonymity, told BBC Newsnight that she was: "Scared for my safety and my kids' safety."

"The main ringleader is getting out of prison, who is well known in Rochdale, Oldham and Middleton, so even if he's not in that area, he still knows people and has a chance to talk to people from that area and that makes me unsafe."

Police detective turned whistleblower and campaigner Maggie Oliver, who has helped support Ruby, told the BBC the now-adult woman had bumped into one of the other members of the gang in an Asda supermarket in 2016, when she believed he was still in prison.

"She lives with the fear that that might happen again, but she's speaking on behalf of all victims and survivors who feel that they are always an afterthought," Oliver said.

She said Ruby was particularly distressed by Ahmed's release because the man she saw in the shops - Adil Khan - has since fled the country despite being under strict licence conditions.

Oliver said: "She now is living with the fear that Shabir Ahmed, who is also under scrutiny, might escape from where he has been scrutinized and turn up on her doorstep or have some of his associates come after her as well.

"This is a fear that victims live with every day and they don't feel that the authorities are taking their concerns seriously."

The Home Office has confirmed Ahmed will be subject to strict licence conditions upon his release, including an electronic tag to monitor his movements, and would be returned to prison if he breached them.

He is also subject to an exclusion zone which includes Rochdale and Oldham.