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Members of grooming gang threatened with deportation are still in Rochdale a decade after scandal

A general view a Mosque in Rochdale which stands alongside high rise flats in the town, as a review after nine Asian men were convicted of the systematic grooming and sexual abuse of white girls in Heywood and Rochdale in 2008 and 2009 has been published.
Four members of the Rochdale abuse gang have still not been deported - a decade after the scandal

Victims of the Rochdale grooming scandal have been “failed again” after it emerged that four men convicted in the case are still in the town years on.

Shabir Ahmed, 66, Qari Abdul Rauf, 50, Abdul Aziz, 48 and Adil Khan, 49, were members of a gang who preyed on vulnerable girls as young as 12 for two years from 2008.

They were among nine men convicted in 2012 of a catalogue of serious sex offences and as the only ones to have dual UK-Pakistani citizenship, were at risk of being deported back to Pakistan.

But despite that, but none of the four appear to have been deported or be facing deportation.

Alias Yousaf, solicitor for Adil Khan, speaks to the media outside Liverpool Crown Court, where nine Asian men were jailed for their part in a child sex ring which exploited vulnerable teenage girls.
Members of the gang were convicted of a catalogue of sex offences in 2012 (Picture: PA)

Ahmed - known as ‘Daddy’ - is still serving a 22-year jail term for rape, but locals say Rauf is back living at his home address in Rochdale and Aziz has also been seen in the town. Khan's exact whereabouts are not known.

According to locals, one woman who was abused wet herself and ran into a shop after spotting her attacker in the town centre recently and another victim bumped into her abuser in a nightclub.

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The Home Office will not say whether a decision has been made to deport any of the four and a spokeswoman said they do not routinely comment on individual cases.

Maggie Oliver, the detective who resigned from Greater Manchester Police and turned whistleblower over the botched Rochdale inquiry, said: “The process most of these girls have been through has led them to expect very, very little from the authorities.

"They expect nothing and are not disappointed. They have been failed again and again and again.

"They do see some of these men around Rochdale on a fairly regular basis. It is really distressing for them, there's nothing that the girls can do. It's actually disgraceful."

In this Wednesday, May 16, 2012 photo, pedestrians walk past town hall in Rochdale, England. The story of the abused Rochdale girls is tragic by any measure, but it has also become explosive. Because there is no getting around its racial subtext: The girls are white, and the men who used them for sex are Asian Muslims, mostly Pakistanis raised in Britain. Louis Kushnick, founder of the race relations resource center at the University of Manchester, said it has become convenient for white residents - including those beyond the far-right movement - to blame Muslims for the sex crimes. That view overlooks all the problems that left the girls vulnerable in the first place, he says, citing a deficient school system and a government-backed child care regime riddled with neglect and abuse. And he says the prolonged economic downturn has intensified resentments, with whites and Asians competing for the same "crap" jobs. "Blaming the Muslims lets us avoid addressing these questions,” he says. "Once we blame 'The Other,' we think we have an explanation that makes sense." (AP Photo/Jon Super)
Members of the gang are still spotted around Rochdale by their victims, locals say (Picture: AP Photo/Jon Super)

In 2016, when home secretary, Theresa May ruled it would be "conducive to the public good" to deprive the four of the right to remain in the UK, sparking a lengthy legal battle as they appealed, finally losing a Court of Appeal ruling in July last year.

Eight judges, including the Master of the Rolls Lord Justice Sales, have now heard their case and upheld rulings all four should lose UK citizenship rights.

Lawyers said it is probable the four will invoke the European Convention on Human Rights to argue their right to a family life would be impinged if they were removed from the UK.

Ms Oliver said: "Once you commit these horrific offences your human rights should come second.

"It makes me really angry and it's really upsetting whey you think what they have done that they even have any rights."

Billy Howarth, founder of Parents Against Grooming UK in Rochdale, said: "We demand an explanation as to why they have not been deported.

"That was one of the promises, that these men would be removed from the country so they would not have to set eyes on them again.

"People are going mad over it, especially the people who live on the same streets with them."

Nazir Afzal, the lawyer credited with pursuing the groomers, overturning an earlier decision not to prosecute, said: "I am concerned that despite the efforts that have been made to ensure they are no longer a threat to women and girls in this country, that they remain in this country and the process continues and is prolonged."

Former taxi driver Aziz regularly took his young victim to different flats around Rochdale, where she was plied with cannabis and vodka and coerced into sex with men who paid him cash.

Jailed for nine years in May 2012, he was released in December 2015 after serving three years and seven months.

Rauf, a father-of-five, trafficked a 15-year-old girl for sex, driving her to secluded areas to have sex with her in his taxi and ferry 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 two years and six months of his sentence.

Khan got a girl 13-year-old pregnant but denied he was the father then met another girl, 15, and trafficked her to others. He was sentenced to eight years, released in 2016 and was last known to be living in Manchester.

A spokeswoman for current Home Secretary, Rochdale-born Sajid Javid, has been approached for comment.