Two Rochdale sex grooming gang members will be deported
The pair spent years in court arguing that sending them to Pakistan would be a human rights breach.
Two members of a grooming gang that abused dozens of young girls in Rochdale are set to be deported.
Adil Khan, 51, and Abdul Rauf, 52, launched a seven-year appeal to prevent them being sent to Pakistan, claiming it would infringe their human rights.
Now immigration judges have ruled they have no grounds, paving the way for their removal from the UK.
They were convicted in 2012 for their role in a raft of notorious sex offences against children.
Sex offender Khan told an earlier hearing he wanted to stay in the UK to be a ‘role model’ for his son and to teach him ‘right from wrong’.
He was released after four years in jail for getting a 13-year-old girl pregnant and threatening a 15-year-old with violence while trafficking her to other men.
Rauf, a father-of-five, trafficked a 15-year-old girl for sex, driving her to secluded areas in his taxi and inviting others to abuse her.
He was jailed for six years and released in November 2014 after serving two years and six months of his sentence.
They were part of a nine-strong gang of Asian men convicted of sex offences against vulnerable girls in 2012.
For two years from early 2008, girls as young as 12 were plied with alcohol and drugs and gang-raped in rooms above takeaway shops.
Some were ferried to different flats in taxis where cash was paid by men to abuse the victims.
Over a two-year reign of terror against the town’s vulnerable girls, as many as 47 were groomed.
After years of costly legal battles, a judge has warned Khan shows a ‘breath-taking lack of remorse’ for his crimes and said there is a ‘very strong public interest case’ for deporting Rauf too.
Along with another man Abdul Aziz, the pair had fought and lost a long legal battle against an order depriving them of UK citizenship, the prelude to deportation, losing a final Court of Appeal ruling in 2018.
They argued the move breached their human rights and said they had ‘renounced’ their Pakistani citizenship.
Since being released from jail, they have been permitted to live in the UK.
The immigration tribunal heard their appeal hinged on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to a private and family life.
During the hearing it emerged Abdul Aziz, a ringleader of the gang who remains behind bars, had been allowed to remain in the UK.
He had also renounced his Pakistani citizenship but did so earlier than the other two and just days before the Court of Appeal ruling.
The latest decision was made in August and released publicly on Wednesday.
Victims groups in Rochdale have been highly critical of their ability to remain close to their victims while delaying their deportation through the courts.
Home Office lawyers argued the case had taken a ‘very long time’ and it is in the public interest to deport both men ‘as soon as possible’.
At an earlier hearing, the QC representing Rauf, said: ‘The matter needs to be thoroughly litigated’ and similar cases had gone ‘all the way to Strasbourg’.
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