The British government has been revealed to have decided four years ago to not deport the ringleader of a child rape grooming gang in Rochdale from the UK after he renounced his citizenship in his native Pakistan.
During a deportation tribunal for his fellow child rapists, Abdul Aziz, 51, was revealed to have successfully secured his status in the UK four years ago despite previously losing an appeal against the government stripping of his UK citizenship.
The ongoing tribunal for fellow Pakistani national Rochdale grooming gang members Adil Khan, 51 and Qari Abdul Rauf, 52, heard that Abdul Aziz renounced his Pakistani citizenship on July 13, 2018, just five days before all three rapists lost the right to retain their UK citizenship.
Because of this, then Home Secretary Sajid Javid made the decision “not to make a deprivation order in respect of you,” thereby allowing Aziz to retain his British nationality and therefore avoid deportation, The Daily Mail reported.
Aziz, referred to by other members of the Rochdale grooming gang as “The Master”, was jailed for nine years in 2012. He was convicted of trafficking and sexually exploiting a 15-year-old girl, whom he took around apartments in Rochdale where she was plied with vodka and drugs and forced to have sex with other men in exchange for money.
In 2015, then-Home Secretary Theresa May ruled that all three men should lose their British citizenship due to the heinous nature of their crimes, saying it would be “conducive to the public good” to revoke their right to remain in the country.
The failure of successive conservative governments to deport the Pakistani child rapists has been a subject of controversy, perhaps explaining why the government kept it secret that it had granted Aziz the right to remain in Britain.
Commenting on the failure to deport the groomers, former detective turned rape gang whistleblower Maggie Oliver said: “All three of them should have been kicked out of the country as soon as they were released from prison.
“Instead, they’ve been given hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal aid to pay for clever lawyers who seek to defend the indefensible.
“It’s just the latest evidence that our criminal justice system is broken and that victims get no consideration at all.”
Barristers representing Adil Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf argued that they should receive the same treatment as Aziz and be able to stay in the country, despite the fact that they attempted to use the same loophole of renouncing their Pakistani citizenship months after their appeal.
The predators have launched a series of taxpayer-funded legal challenges to their deportation stretching back to 2017. Though the appeal was rejected in 2018, the government has so far failed to deport the abusers, leaving them free to roam the same streets where they groomed children and even come into contact with their victims.
The legal team representing Qari Abdul Rauf have argued that his deportation would breach his right to a “private and family life” guaranteed by the European Court of Human Rights, which still has jurisdiction over British immigration because of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to remain in the Council of Europe, which is technically a separate body from the European Union and therefore unaffected by Brexit.
Rauf was found guilty in 2012 of raping and trafficking a 15-year-old girl, using his taxi to drive her to flats in Rochdale where others would have sex with the girl.
Adil Khan, who has argued that he should receive the same treatment as Abdul Aziz, told the tribunal: “I have a question for the Home Secretary, whether Mr Aziz was an angel and I am a devil?”
The Pakistani national was also convicted of impregnating a thirteen-year-old girl, yet has attempted to blame “racial bias” on the attempts to deport him from the country.
The final decision on the immigration status of Rauf and Khan is expected to be determined later this year.
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