Pakistan is refusing to take back two of Britain’s most depraved paedophiles because they tore up their passports. Rochdale grooming gang ringleaders Qari Abdul Rauf and Adil Khan, who got a schoolgirl pregnant, renounced their Pakistani citizenships and still live in the UK after a decade-long legal battle.
Pakistani officials said it would be “extremely difficult” to take the predators back as there was “no basis to accept them” if they had renounced their citizenship. Critics declared the UK should suspend visas for Pakistani citizens if Islamabad refuses to co-operate and take back two of Britain’s worst grooming offenders. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said the UK must not allow the two gang groomers to be used as “bargaining chips” by the Pakistan government and urged Sir Keir Starmer to take tougher action.
“Starmer needs to grow a backbone and suspend visas and aid if they don’t co-operate,” he said.
Rochdale MP Paul Waugh slammed the “utter outrage”.
He said: “The last government failed repeatedly to send them back. Ministers in this Government know that’s utterly unacceptable and I’ve been working hard with them to get it sorted. We need action because the people of Rochdale deserve nothing less.”
Islamabad is said to be linking calls for the return of direct flights between the UK and Pakistan to discussions about taking back convicted grooming gang members.
The Rochdale child rapists are the most high-profile who remain in the UK after exploiting the courts and citizenship rules to avoid deportation.
Father-of-five Rauf, 55, and Khan, 54, were the leaders of a grooming gang that attacked 47 girls – some as young as 12 – after plying them with drink and drugs.
Rauf was jailed for six years but released in November 2014 after serving two years and six months of his sentence.
Khan was jailed for eight years in 2012.
In 2022, he claimed a judge should not deport him because his son needs a role model.
He said through an interpreter: “As you know, the father figure is very important in every culture in the world, to be a role model for the child, to tell him or her right from wrong.”
He added that his family did not want him back because his infamy would be bad for their business.
Rauf trafficked a 15-year-old girl, driving her to secluded areas to sexually abuse her in his taxi and ferrying her to a flat in Rochdale, where he and others abused her.
Rauf and Khan renounced their Pakistani citizenship in a desperate attempt to avoid deportation after the Home Office won a Court of Appeal ruling in 2018.
A third member of the gang, Abdul Aziz, was also allowed to stay after tearing up his passport.
Under international law, a country cannot strip its nationals of citizenship if it makes them stateless.
A Pakistan government source said it was conveyed in the talks “that the UK must provide a justification for why Pakistan should accept criminals deemed dangerous to humanity, especially when they are not Pakistani citizens”.
If they had renounced their citizenship, “Pakistan has no basis to accept them”, said the source.
