Rapist allowed to remain here

A CONVICTED rapist cannot be deported back to Afghanistan partly because the Taliban ‘take a dim view’ of sex offenders, a court has ruled.

Ibrahim Ahmadi, 29, came to the UK in 2007 and was granted asylum seven years later. But the following year he was jailed for seven years – later reduced to five – for rape and sexual assault after preying on a 25-year-old woman as she slept in her Glasgow flat.

The Home Office began proceedings to deport him, but Ahmadi successfully claimed he would be persecuted in his homeland for being a member of the minority Hazaras ethnic group. An immigration tribunal also decided it was ‘reasonably likely the Taliban would take a dim view of an individual who had committed a violent sexual offence in a Western country’.

But judges Hugo Norton-Taylor and Tom Wilding said Ahmadi still ‘represents a danger’, adding: ‘There remains a strong public interest in deportation.’

MSP Russell Findlay said: ‘This judgment... suggests the human rights of a rapist are deemed more important than the safety of the public. Most people couldn’t care less about his sob story.’

The Home Office said it may try again to deport Ahmadi if circumstances change in Afghanistan.