Asian sex grooming gang to be deported
(But it could take years — AND they’re on legal aid)
FOUR members of an Asian grooming gang face being booted out of Britain after losing a legal battle to stop the Home Secretary stripping them of their passports.
But it could be years before the men, who preyed on girls as young as 13, are sent back to Pakistan if they challenge their deportation in the courts.
Paedophile Shabir Ahmed, 64 – the ringleader of the Rochdale child sex gang – Abdul Aziz, 46, Adil Khan, 47 and Abdul Rauf, 48, have tried exploiting human rights laws to avoid being thrown out.
In another kick in the teeth for their victims, it emerged that Aziz, Khan and Rauf – who are already back on the streets after being released from prison – have used thousands of pounds of taxpayerfunded legal aid to fight their case.
In December Britain’s most senior immigration judge described the group’s ‘cavalier and unprofessional’ lawyers for obstructing attempts to deport them.
Mr Justice Bernard McCloskey said the Nottingham-based firm Burton and Burton, which is funded by legal aid, had treated the immigration tribunal hearing the case with ‘sustained and marked disrespect’.
Yesterday he rejected the grooming gang’s appeals against Theresa May’s decision as Home Secretary to strip the dual-nationals of their British citizenship as a prelude to deportation proceedings.
The four Pakistanis were convicted in May 2012 of preying on girls in Rochdale. Ahmed was jailed for 19 years, while the others were given terms of between six and nine years.
Mr Justice McCloskey, president of the Upper Immigration Tribunal, described their crimes, in which they plied their victims with alcohol, as ‘shocking, brutal and repulsive’.
He said: ‘In some cases girls were raped callously and viciously and in others they were forced to have sex with paying customers.’
He rejected all five grounds on which the men based their appeals.
In an extraordinary bid given their crimes, three of the men claimed Mrs May had failed to safeguard the welfare of their own children.
All four claimed removing their passports interfered with their rights as EU citizens and breached the Human Rights Act – which protects family life.
But the judge gave the men permission to take their case to appeal on a point of law – meaning the case could drag on. Even after passports are removed, the Home Secretary must serve a deportation order ‘in the public good’, and this could mean legal challenges that carry on for months or even years.
Burton and Burton did not respond to requests for comment.