A ringleader of Rochdale’s infamous sex grooming gang has avoided deportation, tribunal hears

To say I am angry is an understatement, but I am not surprised. The chattering classes of human rights lawyers talk in double speak. Pretending to abhor violence against women, while protecting abusers of women.  But here the abused were white proles who don’t matter, and the abusers ethnic diversifiers of colour who are fetishised. 
From the Manchester Evening News and the Daily Mail.

A ringleader of the Rochdale grooming gang has avoided being deported and it would therefore be wrong to deport two other gang members fighting to stay in the UK, an Immigration Tribunal has heard.

The truth was revealed when a barrister representing Rauf in his battle against deportation read out a document which she said then Home Secretary Sajid Javid wrote to Aziz on Hallowe’en 2018.

Abdul Aziz, 51, referred to by the gang as The Master, was told by the Home Office that despite losing an appeal depriving him of UK citizenship, the first step before deportation to Pakistan, he would not in fact lose his citizenship and was allowed to remain in the UK.

Aziz, Adil Khan, 51 and Qari Abdul Rauf, 52, were among nine gang members jailed in 2012 for a catalogue of child sex offences in Rochdale. All three were liable to be deprived of UK citizenship and deported as they also held Pakistani nationality, and then-home secretary Theresa May ruled it would be “conducive to the public good”.

Since release from jail they have fought a long legal battle against deportation, mounting multiple legal challenges and appeals, spanning several years, on the grounds that deportation would interfere with their human rights.

As Rauf and Khan continued their appeal against deportation at an Immigration Tribunal, it emerged Aziz had already been told he will not be stripped of his UK citizenship and deported. But yesterday, to the outrage of campaigners, it was revealed that in reality, Aziz won his fight to stay in the UK almost four years ago.

Aziz had renounced his Pakistani citizenship on July 13, 2018, six years after he was jailed, but just days before the Court of Appeal ruled he could be deprived of his UK citizenship.

Rauf and Khan only renounced their Pakistani citizenship in September of the same year after the Court of Appeal ruling.

Lawyers for Rauf, who is legally aided, said the law demands consistency of treatment and although Rauf could regain his Pakistani nationality simply by signing a form, he refuses to do so because he does not want to be deported.

Rauf’s lawyers also said deportation would be a breach under articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, arising out of their individual circumstances relating to their private and family life.

Lawyers for Home Secretary Priti Patel have argued that when Khan made the application, he falsely claimed to the Pakistani authorities that he was ‘assured’ of British citizenship. The declaration may therefore be ‘null and void’.

At an earlier hearing Judge Charlotte Welsh granted an application for anonymity for the lawyers representing Rauf, that they could not be named in any report of the hearing. In all my years I have never heard of lawyers so ashamed of acting for a client that they want anonymity.

Whistleblower Maggie Oliver, who resigned a detective over failings in how police handled grooming cases in Rochdale, said victims would be ‘horrified’ to learn that Aziz has secretly had his British citizenship restored.

‘All three of them should have been kicked out of the country as soon as they were released from prison,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘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.’ Victims have repeatedly told of their incredulity that the trio – all of whom had dual UK-Pakistani nationality – remain in the country a decade after they were jailed.

Rochdale MP Tony Lloyd … said Priti Patel had tough questions to answer. He said: ‘I’m astonished, and the people of Rochdale will share that astonishment, none more so than those whose lives were badly hurt by this gang’

The hearing was adjourned with a decision on deportation expected later this year.