Two paedophiles have received short prison sentences after hunting for girls as young as ten in Birmingham, England.
64-year-old Abdi Shire, 64, of Small Heath, and 24-year-old Adean Ahmed, of Edgbaston, were snared by West Midlands Police officers who are “active on social media, instant messaging apps and other online platforms looking for people seeking to groom children online”.
The paedophiles had travelled to try and meet underage girls for sex, according to a West Midlands Police news bulletin, with Ahmed having asked “do you have any 12” and “is there anything like 10” as he attempted to pay for a victim.
Birmingham Crown Court saw fit to impose a sentence of just three years and two months on Shire, and three years on Ahmed — with the likelihood being that they will be automatically released on licence much earlier than that, as most criminal sentenced to non-“life” sentences are entitled to early release halfway or, more rarely, two-thirds of the way through their terms under Labour era legislation the governing Conservatives have left largely unchanged.
“We’ve delivered swift justice against these two men,” said Detective Inspector Lewis Cook, for the West Midlands Police Force Priorities and Vulnerabilities Team, claiming their short custodial terms were “significant prison sentences”.
“Both men had clear intentions to meet and abuse girls – and in Ahmed’s case he enquired about girls as young as 10,” the officer continued.
“Vigilante ‘paedophile hunter’ groups have emerged in recent times and there seems to be a perception police are not doing this work − but that’s absolutely not the case,” he added defensively, referring to groups such as the Guardians of the North which work to catch paedophiles trying to groom children online.
Well over half of the prosecutions against people attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming used evidence gathered by such groups in 2018, according to the BBC — but the police, who have been widely criticised for systemic failures on child grooming, are often resentful of them, accusing them of “acting in their own interests”.
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