Mick Hartley

Dominic Lawson in today’s Sunday Times – Forget deportation, why is the Rochdale rapist free?

Deportation is not the point, not at all. I mean in respect of one of the ringleaders of the Rochdale rape gang, Shabir Ahmed, who was released on Thursday after 14 years in Leeds prison. All the subsequent outcry has been about the inability of the government to deport the 73-year-old Ahmed to the land of his birth, Pakistan. The Immigration Act 1971 blocks Commonwealth citizens from being deported if they came to the UK before 1973 and lived here for at least five years subsequently.

Even the PM-in-waiting, Andy Burnham, intervened (on X): “I want this vile criminal out of the country … I will ask the home and foreign secretaries to review all possible options — and they should consider nothing is off the table.”

Unfortunately for the new Labour MP for Makerfield, Shabir Ahmed will never be taken back by Pakistan — and for good reason. Officials in Islamabad not only claimed that Ahmed had renounced his Pakistani citizenship; they pointed out that he had arrived in the UK as a child, many decades before his offences: “He is a foreigner … it is for the UK government to decide his future.” Quite so: he is our problem, not theirs.

The real scandal is not that Ahmed can’t be deported; it is that he was released last week, on licence, after serving just two thirds of his full sentence. This stems from acts of parliament passed by various governments over the past 35 years, legislating for the automatic early release of offenders. For example, Labour’s Criminal Justice Act 2003 mandated the release of even the most serious offenders (other than those given life sentences) on completing just half of their custodial sentence. In 2020 the Conservative government increased the proportion to two thirds, for the most serious offences. But, as with the previous schemes, this was statutory. Once Ahmed reached that point, he would be automatically released — even though on three occasions the parole board, to which he had applied, determined he was completely unrepentant and unsafe to be let out.

None of these automatic early release schemes were anything to do with rehabilitation, mercy or even, for the most part, a reassessment of public risk: they were all about avoiding overcrowded prisons.

We hear of those who are denied parole because they refuse to admit their guilt. Shabir Ahmed is entirely unrepentant….yet out he comes. To the terror of his victims.

A victim of the infamous Rochdale grooming gang led by Shabir Ahmed is being given additional security measures at her home by police to ensure her safety.

Ruby, who was 12 when Ahmed’s group began abusing her and was previously threatened at gunpoint for going to the police, has been given an “urgent response marker” by Greater Manchester police (GMP), which allows for rapid deployment to her home. Officers are treating her as a “high-risk victim”, according to sources.

She has also been given an app to download on to her phone to contact police should she feel in danger, after meetings about her security with GMP senior officers last week. Officers were told “Ruby does not feel safe with Ahmed in the community”….

Ruby was threatened at gunpoint by an associate of the gang in 2011, who said he would “shoot her” if she went to police. She bumped into one of her abusers, Ahmed’s friend Adil Khan, in an Asda in Rochdale in 2018, after he was released from prison. Khan is currently thought to have left the UK.

“I’ve known Ruby for 15 years and supported her through everything,” said Maggie Oliver, a former detective constable with GMP, who resigned in 2012 after blowing the whistle on police and local authority failures to protect the girls.

“And in 15 years I’ve never seen her so frightened, feeling so angry and powerless and triggered and actually outraged. She was promised so many things. She was promised therapy, a team to support her, and that her abusers would be deported. None of it has happened.”