To be so upset that the leader of the Rochdale grooming gang has been allowed to stay in the UK!

[vermicello]

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/ringleader-rochdales-infamous-sex-grooming-24336978

Those poor girls. It is like they have been abused twice, first by him and his fellow groomers and secondly by the UK justice system, police and social workers. It is sending them a big message that their right to feel safe and protected is not a concern. I can't imagine how traumatic it must be to know you could bump into your abuser at any time and nothing can be done about it. Our justice system is a disgrace.

To top it all off, he has apparently received hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal aid courtesy of taxpayers. I really don't want my taxes wasted on people like him. So upsetting and infuriating!

The leniency of the sentences is dreadful. I hope (but not confident) that release conditions include not going to particular areas. Women deserve better.

I have no intention of committing any crimes. I was born in UK, always British, but it’s almost accidental. My parents were Indian citizens when I was born in the UK before 1983 so I had a right to British citizenship. You can’t be a dual Indian national. My parents opted for British citizenship for me because a passport would come through a lot quicker. That’s it. I’ve spent short holidays in India.

So should I be able to be deported on ancestry if I did commit a crime? How much different if I led exactly the same life but my parents got me an Indian passport and I became British a few weeks or a year later or when they did a few years later?

What if I was born after 1983 exactly the same life - no choice but to be Indian then British citizenship when my parents became British.

I don’t usually feel “other” on MN, I do tonight.

The other thing they haven't thought through is would the other country accept you? You likely don't have a right to citizenship, or residency, in the country your great grandparents came from so they would effectively be making you stateless.

My husband is descended from slaves in the Caribbean but his ancestry goes back to Africa, no idea which country though. I wonder where he'd go?

Indiaorigin

I would have had no issue with him being deported to serve a prison sentence in Pakistan of course he gave up duel citizenship

his sentence has been far to lenient

cases such as these are treated individually and should be

So they'd go straight to prison without a trial? What if what they did in another country was a crime there but not here, would we have someone in prison for doing something perfectly legal in the UK?

So do you think the British govt should have stripped Shamima Begum of her citizenship? It seems hypocritical if a criminal isn't allowed to change their status but it can be changed for them.

Firstly, his sentence was a joke and the whole handling of the situation an absolute disgrace. He should still be under lock and key.

The rest of it is making my blood run cold. I'm a naturalised British citizen who was born elsewhere. I am law abiding but what if I do put a foot wrong? Say the wrong thing on twitter about transwomen that brings Police Scotland to my door, or attend a peaceful protest?
I guess I need to make sure I have no political engagement or express any public opinion, to keep myself safe.

Who is this? Some relation of former UK PM Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, possibly?

He should of never been allowed to give up his other citizenship

I’m so interested in your opinion on exactly how the UK could have stopped him. Should we have barred him from contact with the outside world? Refused to let him speak to his solicitor? Or maybe just have hidden all the pens so he couldn’t sign any paperwork?

I don’t know how much power you think the UK government has, but if we told Pakistan not to allow him to give up his citizenship, we’d have very firmly been told to mind our own business. It’s between him and Pakistan. Funnily enough, we don’t get a say.

I said it is largely dependent on place birth of but can also include your parent place of birth. It not unheard for people who are born and bred here to be deported due to technically not being a British citizen.

Regardless of whether he could be stopped from giving up his Pakistani citizenship, it could have been recognised that he gave it up after he'd been arrested and it was a reasonable assumption that he did this to avoid deportation to Pakistan.

Yup!

Of course he did. And I’m sure nobody was stupid enough to think he’d given it up for any other reason.

But when that leaves his sole nationality as British, and we can’t force him to reinstate his Pakistan citizenship, what other option is there other than to treat him as a British citizen? We can’t make him stateless. And we can’t put him on a plane and send him to a country he’s not a citizen of. It’s all very well people saying we managed it with Shamima Begum, but we didn’t. We just refused to take her back. Nobody in her family had renounced citizenship of any other country and we didn’t actually have to try and convince any other country to accept her because she’d already made herself Syria’s problem. We effectively changed the locks while she was out of the house.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d happily agree with whole of life sentences for this type of offence. I think these people are monsters and they will always be a danger. But people believing that the government could have deported him if only they’d pulled their finger out and tried a bit harder, are just wrong.

Personally, I'd like to deport all racists, fascists and idiots. I'm sure that most of them will probably have some foreign blood in their ancestry...Irish, maybe, or French or Viking. Can we start sending them back to their ancestral homelands tomorrow, please? There are a few on this thread that we could get started with..

Because the other company won’t accept them. And in practice no airline would fly them.

Country

The easy solution is just to keep them locked up in prison.

4 years! And Ghislaine Maxwell’s getting 20.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the Human Rights Act. He's not in prison because his sentence has come to an end, and he can't be deported because he's a British Citizen and there is no country that would accept him. The reasoning would be exactly the.same if we had never had an HRA at all.

How could they go to prison here if they have not committed any crime in this country?

Because it cannot work. If we are going on a "no limit" ancestral links basis that means deporting people whose ancestors were Vikings or ancient Romans. Do you seriously imagine the Scandinavian countries and Italy are going to agree to that?

And where are the limits? Why just paedophiles? How about murderers and rapists, serial burglars and fraudsters, kidnappers, those guilty of assault? Shall we set up a full time ancestry research department to explore the antecedents of everyone convicted of a crime here so we can send them abroad?

And then we have to think about our colonial past. The reality is that under this system we would end up taking many more criminals than we export, with all the fun of running prisons for people who have never lived here and don't speak English. What on earth would be the point?

But he didn't receive it, did he? The lawyers who worked bloody hard did.

You really need to read posts properly before going on one of your cut and paste expeditions.

The real injustice is that his sentence was so lenient.

Both you and Florenz need to educate yourself on the law. This is not happening because of the Human Rights Act. It is happening because this person's sentence is completed, and because he is a British citizen. We have had the concepts of finite sentences and citizenship since way before we even set up the European Human Rights Convention.

To all those banging on about ancestry- this case, and others, are not about people born in the UK.

If a person has come to the UK and committed horrific crimes, why should they be allowed to stay?

This is not about colour, ethnicity or religion.

A white person born in Sweden should be deported if they have committed crimes like this.