a day ago
Pakistani child rapists must be deported
The headlines could hardly be more effective if they were written on an election poster for Reform UK: 'Rochdale grooming gang cannot be deported after tearing up Pakistan passports'.
In the aftermath of Baroness Casey's review of the rape gang scandal, people are already angry. Too angry? Is there a moral ceiling through which citizens' anger at the systematic rape and abuse of vulnerable children should not rise? This is especially the case when the authorities have enabled such behaviour.
There are occasions when, despite all the politicians' warnings that anger gets us nowhere, it is right to be angry. It is good. It is the entirely justified reaction to such barbarism.
And when it is reported that some of the ringleaders of the Pakistani rape gangs remain in this country because their home nation has refused to accept them, that anger rightly intensifies.
Who could fail to be incensed by Pakistan's refusal to welcome home the likes of Adil Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf, jailed in 2012 as ringleaders of a nine-strong gang of Pakistani men who sexually assaulted 47 girls – some as young as 12 – after plying them with drink and drugs over two years in Rochdale?
Having completed their jail sentences, they have cynically renounced their Pakistani citizenships in order to frustrate the courts' decision to deport them. And so talks are underway with Pakistan which, understandably enough, is resistant to killing the fatted calf to welcome back these particular prodigal sons. And who can blame them?
Nevertheless, they were originally Pakistani citizens and to Pakistan they must be returned, rather than remain in the same community where their traumatised victims could easily encounter them on a daily basis. Despite Pakistan's reluctance to accept them back, talks between the two governments are continuing and there may yet be a prospect, if Britain offers enough incentives, of our getting rid of Khan and Rauf.
This is a vital point of international law and precedent: we cannot allow the practice to stand whereby a person with dual citizenship can force the authorities to allow him to remain in the UK, just because he has renounced citizenship of the country of his birth or destroyed his original passport. Any country has the right to remove from its soil foreign criminals who put their own citizens at risk.
Unfortunately for Britain, for the men's victims and for the Government, the man leading the negotiations on the UK side is our Foreign Secretary, David Lammy. Lammy has form on the issue of deporting foreign criminals. Unfortunately, his record is as someone who previously opposed such deportations.
In February 2020, Lammy and the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, (plus a handful of current serving cabinet and other ministers) signed a letter opposing the removal to Jamaica of 50 convicted criminals, including murderers, rapists and drug dealers. Nearly half of those initially targeted were allowed to remain in the UK. And now the Foreign Secretary is leading talks to deport Khan and Rauf.
Perhaps Lammy has thought better of his flirtation with his virtue-signalling political activities of the past and is prepared to take seriously the responsibility of removing these two rapists from British soil. We must hope so.
One of the reported, unofficial requests that might grease the wheels of the negotiations would be UK Government approval for the re-establishment of direct flights between the two countries by Pakistan's national airline, PIA, which were suspended because of safety concerns. But maybe Lammy needs to play hardball.
The UK already sends more than £100 million in aid to Pakistan every year and is the third largest source of foreign direct investment. It would be a crying shame if something were to happen to that nice little earner.
It is nothing short of outrageous that Pakistan even hesitates to allow criminals like Khan and Rauf – and there are plenty of others who would follow in their wake – to be removed back to their homeland. If Pakistan wishes to continue to enjoy the largesse of Britain's taxpayers, it needs to understand the justified anger that decent UK citizens feel towards these rapist thugs. Of course, it is natural that the Pakistani government would prefer not to have to facilitate their return. But life is tough.
If the talks fail, and Pakistan reveals that it is no true friend of the UK, then our foreign policy must reflect that reality. At the same time, the political consequences of those failed talks need hardly be imagined. The use of those Reform posters featuring the sinister faces of child rapists Adil Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf would not only be inevitable – they would be entirely justified.
