Members of a child sex grooming gang have cost taxpayers more than £2m in legal aid bills while battling deportation – with £285,000 paid to the ringleader, it emerged yesterday.
The fees were run up by nine members of a paedophile gang from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, at a string of court hearings to avoid being kicked out of Britain.
Some of the abusers, who were convicted of rape and other sex offences in 2012, used human rights legislation to avoid repeated attempts to have them deported to Pakistan.
A top immigration judge accused lawyers acting for the group of ‘weakening the rule of law’ by obstructing the courts and using time-wasting tactics.
The groomer who racked up the highest amount of fees was gang ringleader Qari Abdul Rauf, who received legal aid totalling £285,000, The Times reported.
Rauf, now 55, has returned to Rochdale since his release from prison in 2014 after serving two-and-a-half years of a six-year-sentence for trafficking a 15-year-old girl for sex and for having sex with her himself.
When sentenced in 2012, the father-of-five – who worked as a taxi driver and was a religious studies teacher at a mosque – was described as a ‘deeply hypocritical individual’ by Judge Gerald Clifton.
Gang ringleader and groomer Qari Abdul Rauf (pictured) racked up the highest amount in legal fees – totalling to £285,000
Shabir Ahmed (left) jailed for 41 years for 30 counts of child rape charges amassed a £255,000 legal aid bill, while Adil Khan (right) ran up a £270,000 taxpayer funded bill
Rauf was told he would be deported to Pakistan following his release from jail.
But he renounced his Pakistani citizenship and his lawyers argued he would be left ‘stateless’ if forced to leave Britain.
They also claimed deportation was against his human right to family life, because he has a wife and children in the UK – and Rauf currently remains in Rochdale working as a delivery driver.
Separately, a £270,000 taxpayer-funded bill was run up by lawyers representing Adil Khan, 54, jailed for eight years for sex trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child.
The married father had a baby with one of the victims, aged just 13 at the time, who believed she was in love with him.
Khan, who also threatened a 15-year-old girl with violence, insisted his son needed a role model and renounced his Pakistani citizenship, like Rauf, as he appealed against attempts to deport him to South Asia.
The Ministry of Justice figures, provided in response to a parliamentary question in the House of Lords, also show that Abdul Aziz, known as the master of the gang, claimed £200,000 in legal aid fees.
And Shabir Ahmed, jailed for 41 years for 30 counts of child rape charges, has run up a £255,000 legal aid bill.
In total, nine members of the same Rochdale gang cost a total of £2.02 million in legal aid fees until June 2021.
Abdul Aziz, known as the master of the child grooming gang, claimed £200,000 in legal aid fees
But the bill is likely to have increased since then, as gang members’ legal battles against deportation have continued.
At least seven of the group are believed to be still living in the UK.
Khan, speaking through an interpreter in 2022, to argue against his deportation, told a judge: ‘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.’
Speaking during an appeal hearing against gang members’ deportations in 2017, Mr Justice Bernard McCloskey – then the UK’s most senior immigration judge, launched a broadside at human rights lawyers.
Mr Justice McCloskey, who became lord justice of appeal in 2019, claimed lawyers were ‘weakening the rule of law’ by using time-wasting tactics and obstructing the courts to prevent their deportation.
