Grooming gang member denies sex crimes in rant
ABUSER BATTLING DEPORTATION SAID HIS CONVICTION WAS ‘A LAUGHING MATTER’
A MEMBER of the notorious Rochdale grooming gang battling deportation from the UK went on a ‘long rant’ denying his crimes and suggesting his prosecution was racist.
Adil Khan, 51, referred to the ‘allegations’ made against him and described it as a ‘laughing matter’ at the Immigration Tribunal hearing his case.
Khan, along with Qari Abdul Rauf, 52, have been told they are to be sent back to Pakistan for the public good, after both were part of a gang convicted of a catalogue of serious sex offences in May 2012.
Since release from jail they have fought a long, legal battle against deportation, mounting multiple legal challenges and appeals, spanning several years on the grounds that deportation would interfere with their human rights. Khan was sentenced to eight years in prison and released on licence four years later. He was questioned by government lawyer, Rory Dunlop QC, about his conviction for conspiracy to engage in sex with a child and trafficking another girl for sexual exploitation. Khan, then in his 40s, impregnated one girl, refusing to accept the child was his until a DNA test was done.
Khan said he only knew 10 words of English so could not groom anyone and denied being part the gang.
Khan, speaking through a Miripuri translator - who said Khan ‘was going on a long rant’ - said: “I’m today denying it, and I was denying it at the time as well and in the future, never will such a thing happen.” Mr Dunlop said the judge
in Khan’s trail had described the suggestion the prosecutions were racially motivated as ‘nonsense.’
Khan replied: “I understand the racial basis and this is the real reason as well. The Home Office falsely levelled an allegation against me.”
Mr Dunlop said: “You treated those 15-year-old girls as worthless and undeserving of basic respect and decency because they were not part of your religion or community, is that right?”
Khan replied: “Religion should not come in between whatever I have done myself.”
He told the tribunal he was in a relationship with the 15-year-old he got pregnant, but denied any involvement with the other girl. And he said his family had accepted he made a ‘mistake’ and forgiven him.
He said he had not told his teenage son about his conviction and the son had not asked, about what he described as ‘this laughing matter.’
Failure to deport any of the grooming gang has led to anger in Rochdale, where victims were living alongside their tormentors, and has led to public criticism on a number of home secretaries.