Islamabad is declining to repatriate Shabir Ahmed, the leader of a Rochdale grooming gang from Pakistan, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for 30 child rape offenses. The UK’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Yvette Cooper, has indicated that the UK government is willing to impose sanctions on Pakistan if it does not accept the sexual offender back. Cooper mentioned during a Commons Foreign Affairs Committee session that the UK has successfully persuaded several countries to repatriate foreign criminals by threatening sanctions.
Newly released figures revealed in the Daily Mail show that Pakistan is set to receive GBP 155m in foreign aid over the next three years. Pakistan’s foreign office spokesman, Tahir Andrabi, publicly announced that the government of Pakistan will not take back the Rochdale grooming gang’s ringleader. Pakistan is reportedly refusing to take Ahmed back and has requested the extradition of two political dissidents from the UK in return.
Despite serving 14 years in prison and being released in July, Ahmed cannot be deported to Pakistan as he was stripped of his UK citizenship. This is due to a loophole in the Immigration Act 1971, which protects individuals who arrived in the UK before 1973 and lived there for at least five years. Ahmed, who was imprisoned for 22 years in 2012 and had his UK passport revoked in 2016 for deportation upon release, cannot be sent back to Pakistan.
A report from a privately funded parliamentary inquiry into organized child sexual exploitation in the UK revealed that over several decades, at least 250,000 girls were victims of gang rape, trafficking, torture, and coerced pregnancy. The perpetrators were predominantly of Pakistani Muslim heritage, while the facilitating institutions were primarily from the British state.
