Rochdale groomers fight deportation with HR plea

LONDON: Two men who were part of the notorious Rochdale grooming gang will fight deportation from the UK by invoking their human rights, a tribunal has heard.

Adil Khan, 51, and Qari Abdul Rauf, 52, have been told they are to be sent back to Pakistan for the public good after both were part of a gang convicted of a catalogue of serious sex offences against young girls.

Both are appealing against the deportation order served on them last July, on the grounds of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – their right to a private and family life.

Khan got a 13-year-old girl pregnant but denied he was the father, then met another girl, 15, and trafficked her to others, using violence when she complained. He was sentenced to eight years in 2012 and released on licence four years later.

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 ferrying 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.

At an immigration tribunal case management hearing held by video-link on Thursday, judges were told that before the Article 8 appeals are heard there must be a hearing to consider the issue of “statelessness”.

Khan claims to have renounced his Pakistani citizenship which would make him “stateless” and a bar to deportation. Sonali Naik QC, representing Rauf, who is legally aided, said: “The matter needs to be thoroughly litigated.”

Naik said the Article 8 appeals of Rauf and Khan should then be dealt with separately and individually as other similar cases have been dealt with in the past, “all the way to Strasbourg”.

Cathryn McGahey QC, representing the Home Office, said the matters should be dealt with jointly as the background facts are the same.

Both Rauf’s and the Government’s lawyers must now instruct experts in Pakistani law for the forthcoming appeal hearing on the issue of statelessness, and the hearing has been adjourned until a date in September – around 13 years after Rauf and Khan first committed the offences.

Last month Khan told a preliminary hearing: “We have not committed that big a crime.” Neither Rauf or Khan were present for Thursday’s hearing.