LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has asked the Home Secretary to review the case of a Rochdale grooming gang leader, Shabir Ahmed, amid calls for the law to be changed to allow him to be deported.
Shabir, 73, known to his victims as “Daddy”, was released from prison on Thursday after serving 14 years since his 2012 conviction for multiple rapes and sexual crimes against young girls. He moved to the UK from Gujarat in Pakistan in the late 70s when he was 14 years old. He has no Pakistani identity papers, having revoked his Pakistani citizenship decades ago to obtain British citizenship.
He is understood to have been released on license and told he will initially have to live in a bail hostel, which is manned 24 hours a day and wear an electronic GPS tag, so he will not be allowed to his last known address on Windsor Avenue in Oldham and is subject to an “exclusion zone”, meaning he cannot go to parts of Rochdale.
He has been stripped of his British citizenship, leaving him without status. He is unable to be deported because of a 1971 law banning the removal of a small group of Commonwealth citizens who arrived in Britain more than 50 years ago.
Downing Street said the prime minister had asked Shabana Mahmood to consider options to secure Ahmed’s deportation, describing his case as “particularly despicable”.
In a statement, it said: “We are absolutely clear that where foreign nationals commit offenses in the UK, we will do everything in our power to remove them.”
Ahmed’s imminent release brought calls for action from politicians, including likely next prime minister Andy Burnham – who urged senior ministers to “review all possible options” for his deportation.
In the Commons, Rochdale Labor MP Paul Waugh called for Ahmed to be deported, saying the Foreign Office “should do everything in their power” to ensure that happens.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said her party would seek to change the government’s immigration and asylum law “to close the loophole so this man can be deported immediately”.
Ahmed was sentenced to 19 years in prison at Liverpool Crown Court in 2012 as one of nine men convicted of offenses against five girls.
A senior Pakistani official has exclusively told Pakinomist News that Shabbir Ahmed is a stateless person and is not a Pakistani citizen.
The official said Ahmed does not have British citizenship and had revoked his Pakistani citizenship many years ago. “As far as we are concerned, he is an alien,” the official added.
