Rochdale abuse leader to appeal over deportation ...funded by you
THE ringleader of the Rochdale child sex ring is continuing his taxpayer-funded fight against deportation, it emerged yesterday.
Shabir Ahmed and three other convicted members of his gang are taking their battle to the Court of Appeal.
They groomed girls as young as 13 for sex, plying them with vodka and raping them if they did not submit. Ahmed, 64, urged his victims to call him ‘Daddy’.
The abuse was featured in this week’s harrowing three-part BBC drama based on the case, Three Girls.
In 2012, then Home Secretary Theresa May ordered he and co-defendants Abdul Aziz, 46, Adil Khan, 47 and Abdul Rauf, 48, to be stripped of their British citizenship and returned to Pakistan.
After a string of publicly-funded court cases exploiting their human rights, immigration judges rejected their latest challenge in February. But they have now been granted permission to continue their fight at London’s Court of Appeal
Nine paedophiles were locked up over the grooming scandal in 2012. Ahmed remains in jail after being given a 22-year sentence. The other three involved in the appeal area all free on licence.
Yesterday one of the gang’s victims told how she ‘just froze’ when she came face-to-face with one of the abusers in Rochdale only a few weeks ago. Speaking under the pseudonym Lily, the woman – who was groomed from the age of 11 – told Good Morning Britain that she hadn’t been taken seriously by the authorities.
‘I actually bumped into one [of the abusers] in my hometown a few weeks ago,’ she told the ITV programme. ‘I just, I just froze. I was like, there’s nothing I can do – I’ve brought it to court, he was sentenced and now he’s out.’
The law firm which represented the four men fighting deportation is now under investigation by a legal watchdog over allegations of stalling tactics. A Home Office spokesman said: ‘All four men have been granted permission to appeal at the Court of Appeal and it would be inappropriate to comment further on ongoing legal proceedings.’
A hearing date is yet to be set.