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Pakistan Refuses to Take Back Rochdale Grooming Gang Leader
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Shabir Ahmed, convicted of 30 child rape offences, is free in Britain under a GPS tag
Pakistan is refusing to take back Rochdale grooming gang ringleader Shabir Ahmed, saying he is no longer a citizen of the country. The 73-year-old was released from HMP Leeds in early July after serving 14 years of a 22-year sentence for 30 child rape offences.
Ahmed claims he renounced his Pakistani citizenship decades ago by tearing up his passport. Pakistani officials say their records support him. He has held no Pakistani passport or identity card since.
Britain disputes this. The Home Office accepts Ahmed believes he renounced his citizenship, but says he did not complete the 'full proper process'.
A Pakistani minister told The Telegraph: 'He is not our national. He has been in the UK for around 60 years. The UK should do whatever it can to him due to his criminality, which is unforgivable. But that's for the UK to do. We have no stake in it.'
Freed despite 'very high risk' warnings
Ahmed's release was automatic at the two-thirds point of his sentence. It was not a Parole Board decision. The board refused to release him early several times, most recently in October 2024. It found he denied his guilt, refused offender programmes, and posed a 'very high risk of serious harm' to children.
He now lives in supervised accommodation with round-the-clock staffing. He wears a GPS tag, faces exclusion zones covering Rochdale, and is on the sex offenders register for life. Any breach returns him to prison. Some victims learned of his release through social media. Vigilante patrols were reported in the Rochdale area after he was freed.
The UK should do whatever it can to him due to his criminality, which is unforgivable. But that's for the UK to do. We have no stake in it.
Ahmed led a gang of mainly Pakistani-heritage men who groomed and raped white British girls, some as young as 12, in Rochdale and Oldham between around 2008 and 2010. A judge described him as a 'violent, hypocritical bully'. He was stripped of his British passport in 2016. His victims were promised in 2012 that he would be deported on release.
The loophole and the two men who used it first
Deportation is blocked by Section 7 of the 1971 Immigration Act. It protects Commonwealth citizens who arrived before 1973 and have lived here for five years or more. Ahmed arrived from Pakistan in the late 1960s, aged about 13.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood plans to amend the law to strip that protection from those who commit crimes of exceptional severity, such as child grooming. The government says Windrush-generation rights would not be affected. The change has not yet been passed.
Two other Rochdale gang members, Qari Abdul Rauf and Adil Khan, used the same tactic. Both were stripped of British citizenship, both renounced Pakistani citizenship, and Pakistan refuses to take either.
Aid, visas, and Pakistan's counter-threat
Government officials say 'all options are on the table', including visa restrictions on Pakistani citizens. By August, Pakistan had signalled it could stop taking back other migrants altogether if pressured over Ahmed.
Reform UK home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said the party would scrap aid and visas 'until they took all their illegals back'. British bilateral aid to Pakistan runs to tens of millions of pounds a year, paid for by taxpayers. The Foreign Office announced £1.33m in monsoon relief this year.
Ahmed remains in Britain under licence conditions. The law change is progressing through Parliament. But even if it passes, deporting him depends on Pakistan agreeing to take him, and Islamabad says it has no stake in the matter.
