# Mahmood to Set Out Plan to Deport Grooming Gang Leader
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will on Monday set out the legal steps the government intends to take to deport the freed ringleader of a Rochdale grooming gang, a case that has exposed a decades-old legal anomaly and sparked a diplomatic standoff with Pakistan.
Shabir Ahmed, jailed for 22 years in 2012 for multiple counts of child sexual offences including rape, was released from prison on licence earlier this month. His release prompted an outcry from victims who said they felt “frightened” and “unsafe,” and from politicians across the spectrum demanding his removal from the country.
Ahmed was one of nine men from Rochdale and Oldham found guilty of exploiting girls as young as 13 at two takeaway restaurants. He was stripped of his British citizenship following his conviction, leaving him with only Pakistani nationality. Yet despite that, he cannot currently be deported under a provision of the 1971 Immigration Act that bars the removal of Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK before 1973 and had been living in the country for at least five years.
It is not yet clear how Mahmood intends to change the law. One government source has previously suggested the process could take up to a year, though opposition parties are pushing for emergency legislation that could achieve the same result in a matter of weeks.
A Legal Anomaly Under Scrutiny
The 55-year-old law at the centre of the case has come under intense scrutiny since Ahmed’s release. The provision effectively exempts a small group of Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK more than 50 years ago from standard deportation procedures, regardless of criminal convictions or the revocation of British citizenship.
For Ahmed’s victims, the revelation that he could not be deported came as a shock. They were informed only at the time of his release that the 1971 Act barred his removal to Pakistan. The fact that Ahmed had already been stripped of his British citizenship when he was jailed — a step typically seen as a precursor to deportation — made the legal roadblock all the more striking.
Since leaving prison, Ahmed has been placed in 24-hour staffed accommodation and fitted with a GPS electronically monitored tag. The government has stated that he will be returned to prison if he breaches any of a series of strict licence conditions.
The Pakistan Problem
Even if the UK government succeeds in changing the law, a second and perhaps more formidable obstacle remains: Pakistan appears unwilling to accept Ahmed.
Officially, Pakistani authorities have not commented on the case. The prime minister’s office referred questions to the Foreign Office, which has not yet responded. Several senior ministers have declined to comment publicly, describing the matter as highly sensitive and being handled at the highest levels of government.
Privately, however, multiple officials have indicated that Pakistan is “unlikely” to accept Ahmed if the UK seeks to deport him. They point out that he left Pakistan decades ago, claims to have surrendered his Pakistani nationality, and has been a British citizen. Unofficially, officials have told the BBC that Ahmed is now Britain’s responsibility, arguing that Pakistan should not be expected to receive someone who is no longer its national.
The situation is further complicated by what appears to be a broader diplomatic friction between the two countries. Dr Farzana Shaikh, a Pakistan expert at Chatham House, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that back-channel negotiations on the issue have seen Pakistan demand the extradition of two political dissidents from the UK.
“We do know there are back channel negotiations going on — these are fraught and point to quite a diplomatic crisis between the two countries,” she said.
Opposition Pressures and Proposed Solutions
The Conservatives are pressing the government to move quickly. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp suggested that sanctions could be imposed on Pakistan if it refuses to accept Ahmed, including restricting visas for Pakistani nationals.
“If they don’t take him back, we can say: well, we’re simply going to stop or restrict issuing visas to people from Pakistan to come here,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “That, by the way, should apply to any country around the world who doesn’t take back its own citizens who are criminals or here illegally.”
The Conservatives are also calling for emergency legislation or an amendment to the current immigration bill going through parliament, arguing that the process of changing the 1971 Act through normal channels would take too long. Philp said emergency legislation could deliver a law change “in a matter of weeks.”
Victims Minister Catherine Atkinson told BBC Breakfast the government has not ruled out emergency legislation. “They haven’t ruled anything out because they are absolutely determined to get this done,” she said.
Pressed on how the government would deal with the complication of Ahmed having renounced his Pakistani citizenship, Atkinson pointed to Mahmood’s track record on removals. She cited instances where visa sanctions were threatened to secure cooperation from other countries.
“She threatened visa penalties for Angola, Namibia and Democratic Republic of Congo unless they took back illegal immigrants and four months later all three were co-operating, with flights off the ground,” Atkinson said. “They were previous negotiations where countries refused to take back foreign national offenders and Shabana was able to secure those returns.”
Broader Context
The expected announcement from Mahmood comes less than a week after a call from grooming gang survivors to exclude sex offenders from early release schemes. The case has reignited debate over how the justice system handles perpetrators of child sexual exploitation, particularly those who hold or held dual nationality.
On Thursday, a spokesperson for Sir Keir Starmer told reporters that the government was “exploring every available option in this case, and that includes talking to the Pakistani authorities.”
Monday’s announcement will be closely watched not only for its immediate implications for Ahmed and his victims, but for what it signals about the government’s broader approach to deportation law, diplomatic negotiations on returns, and the handling of foreign national offenders who arrived in Britain under now-obsolete Commonwealth provisions.
For Ahmed’s victims, the legal and diplomatic wrangling is secondary to a more immediate concern: whether the man who caused them profound harm will ultimately be removed from the country, or whether a half-century-old statute will continue to shield him from deportation.