Islamabad refuses to take back grooming gang leader Shabir Ahmed and blames Britain for his crimes
Ministers have signed off £153 million in aid for Pakistan over the next three years. The announcement came as Islamabad refused to take back Shabir Ahmed, the freed leader of the Rochdale grooming gang.
The Foreign Office released the figures on the final day of the parliamentary session. The money comes from the taxpayer through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office budget. Downing Street said none of it goes to the Pakistani government. It is channelled through charities and other bodies working in the country. The specific organisations receiving the new money have not been named.
Ahmed, 73, was released last month after serving 14 years of a 22-year sentence for child sex offences, including rape. He was jailed in 2012 for 30 rape offences against girls as young as 12, with a separate 19-year sentence for child sex offences and trafficking. He led a gang of eight Pakistani-heritage men who plied girls with alcohol and drugs and raped them in rooms above takeaway shops in Rochdale. The abuse ran for 11 years. A whistleblower who exposed the case told The Guardian his release was ‘really scary’.
Ahmed was born in Pakistan and is thought to have arrived in the UK aged 14. The last government stripped him of his British citizenship. He is reported to have torn up his Pakistani passport, The Telegraph reported, though there is no public confirmation he formally renounced his Pakistani citizenship.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said it wants nothing to do with him. Spokesman Tahir Andrabi said Pakistan had ’no connection whatsoever with this matter’ and called it ’entirely an internal matter of the United Kingdom’, according to BBC News. He added: ‘Regardless of where he was born, the onus lies on where he grew up, was raised, groomed, and, unfortunately, spoiled.’
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans this week to change the Immigration Act 1971, which protects certain Commonwealth citizens from deportation and blocked Ahmed’s removal. She said the law ‘should not be used as a bar against removal in cases like that of Shabir Ahmed’, Yahoo News reported. But officials confirmed he cannot be deported without Pakistan’s agreement. The UK has faced similar refusals before from countries that decline to issue travel documents for their nationals.
Regardless of where he was born, the onus lies on where he grew up, was raised, groomed, and, unfortunately, spoiled
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said aid to Pakistan should be cut off until it takes back Ahmed and all other nationals convicted of grooming gang offences. Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel said Labour ‘slipped this out on the last day of this session of Parliament, so nobody can hold them to account’. Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said Pakistan had received more than £6 billion in British aid over the last two decades and called the refusal a scandal.
Ahmed was judged a high risk of sexual offending against children as recently as 2023, The Guardian reported. He is now living in 24-hour staffed accommodation under strict licence conditions, with an electronic tag and exclusion zones. The Daily Mail’s original report did not mention the 2023 risk assessment or his current licence conditions.
Downing Street said it is engaging with the Pakistani government at a senior level and ‘doing everything possible to deport him’. As of this week, no deportation has taken place.
