'Let me stay to be a son's role model': Rochdale grooming gang members deported to Pakistan after seven-year legal battle
26 October 2022, 17:06 | Updated: 26 October 2022, 17:21
Two members of a notorious grooming gang in the north of England have been deported to Pakistan after a seven-year legal battle to stay in the UK - with one man asking to be let stay in the UK to be a "role model" for his son.
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Adil Khan, 51, and Qari Abdul Rauf, 52, were told that they were to be removed from the country for the public good, with Khan having shown "a breathtaking lack of remorse" for his crimes.
They were convicted in 2012 for being part of a gang that committed a catalogue of serious sex offences against young girls in the Rochdale area, in Greater Manchester.
Read more: Rochdale grooming gang leader was employed by council as welfare officer, report reveals
Judges Charlotte Welsh and Judge Siew Ling Yoke released their detailed legal ruling on Wednesday, which argued that Khan had shown a "breath-taking lack of remorse" and in his and Rauf's case there was a "very strong public interest" for them to be removed from the UK.
Both men cited human rights as a reason for them to be kept in the UK, and said they had renounced their Pakistani citizenship.
Khan told the tribunal hearing earlier this year he also wanted to stay in the UK to be a "role model" for his son.
Both men were part of a group of nine men that groomed as many as 47 young girls over several years.
Khan got a girl, 13, pregnant but denied he was the father then met another girl, 15, and trafficked her to others using violence when she complained.
He was sentenced to eight years in 2012 and released on licence four years later.
'Grooming gangs are predominantly Pakistani Muslim men, why is that?'
Rauf, a father-of-five, trafficked a 15-year-old girl for sex, driving her to remote places to have sex with her in his taxi and ferrying her to a flat in Rochdale where he and others had sex with her.
He was jailed for six years and released in November 2014 after serving just two years and six months of his sentence.
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 and driven around to different flats in taxis where cash was paid to use the girls.
During multiple deportation appeal hearings Khan complained about having no rights in the UK and said he needed to remain in the UK to be a role model for his son and teach him, "right from wrong".
Former gang member reveals grooming practices to LBC
He also denied grooming offences, saying his prosecution was motivated by racism and claiming he could not groom anyone as he could not speak English.
People in Rochdale have been angry that the men have been allowed to stay in the country for years after being released from prison - living in the same town as their victims.
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".
The pair, along with another man Abdul Aziz, 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.
In June, their appeal against deportation was heard before an immigration tribunal.
