Pakistan has blamed Britain for “grooming” and “spoiling” the ringleader of the Rochdale rape gang and turning him to crime, claiming he has “no connection to Pakistan whatsoever”. The Telegraph has more.
Tahir Andrabi, the country’s Foreign Office Spokesman, suggested that the root causes of Pakistan-born Shabir Ahmed’s criminality lay in the UK, where he “grew up, was raised, groomed and, unfortunately, spoiled”.
Andrabi said the onus for dealing with Ahmed lay “exclusively” with the UK and publicly declared for the first time that his Government would not take back the child rapist, who came to Britain 60 years ago.
Britain is seeking to deport 73-year-old Ahmed back to his birth country following his release from prison two weeks ago after serving 14 years of a 22-year sentence for 30 child rape offences.
In a press statement on Thursday, Andrabi said: “His heinous crimes demand serious introspection rather than a quest to search for extraneous causes.”
On Monday, Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, announced that she would change 50 year-old immigration laws to close a loophole that prevented the Home Office from deporting Ahmed, even though he has been stripped of his British citizenship.
Ahmed, who was known as ‘Daddy’ to his victims, received concurrent sentences of 22 and 19 years for raping children as young as 12 whom his gang groomed at two takeaway restaurants in Rochdale. The court was told he had abused one girl for more than a decade, using her as a “possession” for his own sexual gratification.
Earlier this month, the Telegraph revealed that Pakistan was refusing to take him back because it claimed he had renounced his Pakistani citizenship, and was demanding that Britain accepted its extradition requests for dissidents living in the UK.
In his statement, Andrabi said: “Pakistan condemns the incident of child sexual abuse in the strongest possible terms. Perpetrators of such heinous crimes must be investigated, prosecuted, and punished to the fullest extent of the law, irrespective of race, ethnicity or religion.
“The matter in question is entirely an internal matter of the United Kingdom. The individual concerned is a British national who spent his entire adult life in the UK and was duly convicted by a British court for reprehensible offences committed on British soil.
“Any decision regarding his release, supervision, or future legal status falls exclusively within the jurisdiction of the competent British authorities and must be dealt with in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom.
“Regardless of where he was born, the onus lies on where he grew up, was raised, groomed and, unfortunately, spoiled. His heinous crimes demand serious introspection rather than a quest to search for extraneous causes.
“Let me add that the Government of Pakistan has no connection whatsoever with this matter. We cannot be associated with any decisions relating to the individual’s release or subsequent treatment under British law.”
Britain disputes that Ahmed has renounced his Pakistani citizenship. Officials say he may have torn up his passport, but claim he did not go through the full process of terminating his citizenship.
It is understood that the UK has been in negotiations with Pakistan over Ahmed’s deportation for a year. Parallel discussions over returning two other ringleaders of the Rochdale grooming gang, who have also sought to avoid deportation by renouncing their citizenship, are also under way.
Worth reading in full.
Of course, if Ahmed came to Britain when he was 13, he certainly was not “raised” and did not “grow up” here.
Pakistan’s exculpatory statement also sounds uncomfortably close to the victim-blaming the rape gangs themselves engage in: it’s the girls’ fault we raped them, it’s Britain’s fault for having girls we can rape.
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Find another victim, put the bastard back in jail, throw away key.
Painful though it may be folks, I’m afraid he has a point. This runt was brought up here, allowed to become what he did, and when he started raping children our establishment told him it was OK. When he finally got jailed, the 42 years he should have served became 14.
Pakistan would likely have lynched him 20 minutes after conviction.
The Government could stop all Foreign Aid to Pakistan. Block all visas from Pakistan. Expel their Diplomats.
They won’t do any of them – because they don’t want to. Those Pakistani bloc votes are just so important.
We gave 48 million pounds in Aid to Pakistan this year, why? Its not a poor country, but if they won’t take back their citizens then we should at the very least not be sending them any money at all.
As for this monster, if it were me I would just drop him on some isolated island, there are plenty across the world and tell him to get on with it.
I reckon we could probably land him on a Pakistan beach somewhere.
Though maybe their border control is better than ours?
Stop wasting everyones breath, and stop his immediately, put the dog down and start deporting other Pakistanis with any possible criminal connections whatsoever en masse that would focus some minds in the third world. And stop giving the animals my bloody money the government steals from me!
They have a point. We allow that behaviour.
By we I mean the sons of bitches who have taken over the establishment and have imposed on everyone else their policies, their ideology and their catastrophic decisions.
The Pakistani government is merely pointing out what droves of British people are complaining about (some being harassed by the poloce or even thrown in jail for it).
The problem isn’t.Pakistan or their culture. The problem is the cretins who are running this country into the ground.
I would argue that it’s a toxic combination of British stupidity, Pakistani tribal culture and Islamic justification of abuse.
Pakistani tribal culture and Islamic justification of abuse have existed for a long long time.
It is British stupidity and British stupidity alone that has allowed it to proliferate in Britain, where previously it was nowhere to be seen.
We need to hold the right people responsible for this.
I wonder what penalty, if any, a person who was found guilty of 30 counts of child rape would face in Pakistan? I guess it would depend on how important the children were.
Death.
The problem is both Pakistani Muslim culture and the leftist establishment who do nothing about it. There is a story of the Pakistani village elders who punished a rape by the public rape of the sister of the perpetrator. I am not saying this is necessarily mainstream Pakistani law but it must surely have a cultural influence.
As Pakistan says its Britain’s fault then they will be happy when we suspend all visas?
We are not going to do anything like that. The Government can says what it likes but lacks the sphericals to actually carry out the threat to cut aid and suspend visas to Pakistan
Well they wouldn’t want any more of their citizens spoiled, would they?
Yes. Stop issuing visas and cancel any existing ones.
Absolutely. Can’t have the moral purity of such men “spoiled” by British culture. Perish the thought.