Change law to kick out Rochdale rapist, No 10 urged

[Twiglets1]

Reported in The Telegraph that Labour is facing mounting pressure to change immigration laws immediately so that a child rapist freed from jail can be deported.

Shabir Ahmed, 73, was sentenced to more than 20 years in jail after being convicted of 30 child rape offences as part of the Rochdale grooming gang.

But on Thursday, the Pakistan-born rapist was released after serving 14 years.

Britain stripped him of his citizenship, but cannot currently deport him because of protections granted to Commonwealth immigrants such as Ahmed under the Immigration Act 1971.

On Thursday, Downing Street said the Prime Minister had asked Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, to “consider what can be done” to deport Ahmed, describing his case as “particularly heinous”.

It comes after Andy Burnham, expected to succeed Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister, also vowed to “review all options” to deport the "vile criminal".

The amendment to Ms Mahmood’s immigration bill will propose rewriting the 1971 act to permit the removal of serious criminals such as Ahmed.

However, even if an amendment were to pass, two senior Pakistani government officials told The Telegraph that the country would not accept Ahmed back because he renounced his Pakistani citizenship “several decades ago”.

They added that he posed a danger to Pakistani children.

If their claim is correct, it places Ahmed in the same situation as two other freed Pakistani ringleaders of the Rochdale grooming gang whom Pakistan has refused to take back.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/02/deport-foreign-born-child-rapists-demand-labour-mps/

Agree with this in an ideal world. The problem is prisons are already overcrowded. Build more and more prisons? I don’t know.

None have been deported. Of the other two, one is still here, the other absconded afaik.
The victims were promised that these men would be deported.

Evert day more arrive by dinghy

True it’s going the other way atm, there’s a thread on early release.

Yes Pakistan is rife with paedophilia, and particularly by family members.

This is very different to Pakistani grooming gangs operating in the UK, who have members who are not related, and target white girls.

Yes the Jay report found there were Asian victims of grooming gangs, but it also concluded the victims were overwhelmingly and disproportionately white.

And the vast majority are not rapists.

I don’t actually support this option but in some countries these individuals would just be executed. It would certainly resolve this dilemma but would create others eg miscarriage of justice etc.

Which ones are and which ones arent?

There is nothing easily found online about why he came here but at 20 years old it appears very likely that he was allowed to come in as part of family reunification to join an older relative or relatives who were largely employed in the northern textile mills at the time. The early 70s saw a big influx of people from Pakistan due to changes in immigration law and withdrawal of Pakistan from the Commonwealth in 1972.

The UK invited him to live with us and then failed to integrate him and people like him into British culture and then for fear of being accused of racism allowed him and people like him to continue offending for decades. The scale of the grooming gangs nightmare was a creation of the UK's own making.

How do you integrate people who don’t want to be integrated?

How do we integrate them? Teach them to Morris dance?

How do you integrate people who don’t want to be integrated?

I would also like to know the answer to this.

Making cousin marriage illegal might help

It looks like the opposite. He had a job as welfare officer at Oldham Council and failure to notify the council of crimes meant he stayed in that role. The system integrated him, rather than notified anyone of his allegations.

If this can’t be answered what then?

I thought he was a taxi driver?

Still here as in Rochdale? I wouldn't be surprised if they are both still in the town.

It's awful.

Both Shabir Ahmed worked as a taxi driver in addition to his employment with the local council

There's also the issue of concurrent sentences. They don't make any sense to me; if a woman is raped, and the rapist is sentenced to ten years punishment, he should serve ten years for that crime. If he also happens to have raped someone else, and gets another ten year sentence, surely that should be served separately? If it's just bundled into the existing ten years, he's not actually being punished at all for the second rape. With concurrent sentences, he could rape dozens of women, and serve no extra time at all; so once he's raped one person, he may as well keep on raping until he's caught as he won't suffer any further punishment. Which seems completely disgusting to me.

This creature should have served separate full terms for each and every crime he committed, and as he reached the end of a sentence and started a new one, he should be reminded of exactly what - and who - this new stretch would be for.

One did go back to Rochdale after release. I don't know if he's still there now. The other is believed to be in Pakistan.

Thank you for the reply.

Your post says so much about you.

We are not global, we are the UK.

I care about our UK girls.

If he goes to Pakistan and abuses a child then Pakistan can deal with him. He should not be our problem.

How do you know???

Who made that promise? Clearly someone who didn’t understand it was impossible.

You do what the Danish do and stop there being large communities of their native culture in which they can live without integrating at all. They have laws against to many people of non Danish culture living in one area.