Three members of Rochdale grooming gang are finally stripped of UK citizenship

THREE members of an Asian grooming gang face deportation after being stripped of their British citizenship yesterday.

Abdul Aziz, 46, Adil Khan, 47, and Abdul Rauf, 48, raped, abused and tormented girls as young as 13 in Rochdale.

They were jailed for a total of 23 years in 2012, but have spent the past three years using human rights laws and taxpayer-funded legal aid to fight deportation back to Pakistan.

The paedophiles, who are all of Pakistani nationality and acquired British citizenship through naturalisation, have argued that kicking them out of the country would harm their family life.

But yesterday the Court of Appeal said stripping the men of their UK passports was ‘conducive to the public good’.

It could still be years before the trio are booted out because they will be able to appeal once the official papers requesting their deportation are signed.

They are already back on the streets after serving their sentences.

Tory MP Philip Davies urged the Home Office to kick them out as soon as possible. ‘This seems to be a rare outbreak of common sense from the courts,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure anyone in their right mind would want these men to retain British passports after what they have done.

‘I just hope that any higher court upholds the Court of Appeal’s decision so these people are kicked out as soon as possible.’

Mr Davies who represents Shipley, in West Yorkshire, said it was galling that taxpayers had to pay for the men to challenge what should have been a formality.

Giving judgement, Lord Justice Sales said what the men did to vulnerable girls, who were plied with vodka before being pimped out for sex, amounted to ‘serious organised crime’.

He said: ‘All the men treated the girls as though they were worthless and beyond all respect. They were motivated by lust and greed.’

Aziz, Khan and Rauf were informed by the Home Office that they would be stripped of their UK citizenship in October 2015. But ever since then they have been challenging this in the courts.

Their cases, thought to have cost thousands of pounds in legal aid, were rejected twice by asylum tribunals, but the men then represented themselves before three senior judges at the Court of Appeal in July. They argued that the previous tribunals did not take enough account of the fact they may be deported as a result of the decision to remove their citizenship.

However, Lord Justice Sales, who was sitting with Sir Terence Etherton, the Master of the Rolls, and Sir Stephen Richards, ruled the tribunals made a ‘proper and lawful assessment’ of the likelihood of deportation.

All three men were found guilty of conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children under the age of 16 and trafficking for sexual exploitation in a trial at Liverpool Crown Court in May 2012. They were part of a nine-strong gang – eight of Pakistani origin and one from Afghanistan – who groomed children as young as 13. Police believe there could have been up to 47 victims.

The girls were raped and pimped out to paying customers in Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire.

Aziz, who was one of the ringleaders and referred to as The Master, was jailed for nine years.

Rauf, a married father of five, was jailed for six years and Khan, who claimed he was innocent at the hearing last month, was sentenced to eight.

Last year the Mail revealed that the cost to the taxpayer in legal aid awarded to the trio, plus ringleader Shabir Ahmed, 64, for their criminal trial was more than £1million.

Gary McIndoe, an immigration lawyer with Latitude Law, said the Home Office now had the option, under rules introduced by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, to ‘certify the decision to deport’. This would force the trio to appeal once they were back in Pakistan, which would significantly speed up the process of kicking them out of Britain.

Lord Sales said that the men would be ‘entitled’ to argue that deportation would infringe their human rights and those of their family members.

It is understood that Ahmed opted against taking his case to the Court of Appeal and, as a consequence was stripped of his citizenship in 2016.

He was jailed for 22 years in 2012 and is likely to be deported at the end of his prison term.

A spokesman for the Home Office said: ‘This was an appalling case. Citizenship is a privilege, not a right, and it is right that the Home Secretary can deprive an individual of their citizenship where it is believed it is conducive to the public good to do so.’

‘Rare outbreak of common sense’