Gang rapist saved by plane mutiny in new bid to stay
A RAPIST who dodged deportation after a mutiny by plane passengers will next month launch another bid to avoid being booted out of Britain.
Yaqub Ahmed, who was part of a gang who subjected a 16-year-old girl to a terrifying ordeal, is applying for a judicial review in a bid to block his deportation to Somalia. The legal move was disclosed last week at an immigration court hearing in Newport, South Wales, where he was seeking to be released from a detention centre on bail. His application was refused.
Chris Howells, representing the Home Office, revealed that when Ahmed, 31, was out of jail on licence in 2016, he continued to consort with his co-defendants with whom he had gang-raped the teenage girl and trawled nightclubs and bars looking for ‘young white women’ to have sex with.
Mr Howells said: ‘He continued to engage in sex acts with young women. He represents a continued harm to young white females who are found in nightclubs, public houses and anywhere else where alcohol is available.’
He added that Ahmed would represent a ‘very high risk’ of absconding, was ‘highly likely’ to reoffend and should remain at a detention centre in Harmondsworth, West London.
Ahmed was jailed for nine years in 2008 for his part in the gang rape.
An attempt to deport him in October 2018 failed when passengers aboard a Turkish Airways flight about to jet him out of the UK revolted. They sprang to his defence after he began screaming shortly before take-off from Heathrow.
He had been due to be returned to
Somalia from Istanbul, but the passengers – unaware of his brutal crime – demanded security guards remove him.
Ahmed, who was first told he was liable for deportation in 2010, was released on bail in March last year, but detained again shortly afterwards because he ripped off an electronic tag and tried to flee the country.
At that stage, 12 years of criminal trials, prison costs and immigration cases involving Ahmed – who receives legal aid – were estimated to have cost British taxpayers more than £330,000.
That figure is set to soar now he has won the right to argue his case for a judicial review hearing.
Refusing last week’s bail application, judge Adam RhysDavies said: ‘I am satisfied he is a risk to the public and his continued detention is necessary.’