Makerfield MP Andy Burnham last week said: “Like everyone, I want this vile criminal out of the country.” He was talking about Shabir Ahmed, the leader of a gang of rapists in Rochdale who was released last week from prison after 14 years. A former dual British-Pakistani national, Ahmed was deprived of his British citizenship as part of his sentence and has since renounced his Pakistani citizenship, rendering himself in effect stateless.
Mr Burnham said: “Victims must come first.” Rightly so. And he pre-empted his appointment as prime minister by adding: “I will ask the home and foreign secretaries to review all possible options – and they should consider nothing is off the table.”
The current home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has already acted on his instruction. She will ask parliament on Monday to change the law that prevents Ahmed’s deportation to Pakistan. She will seek to amend the Immigration Act 1971, which protects Commonwealth immigrants from deportation if they arrived in Britain before 1973.
However, this is only the first of the obstacles to removing Ahmed from this country.
The next problem is that Pakistan, it has been reported, is refusing to accept him. Mr Burnham seemed to recognise this possibility by his reference to the foreign secretary. It would fall, in the first instance, to whomever Mr Burnham appoints as foreign secretary to renew discussions with Pakistan about the deportation of criminals who have served their sentences.
Talks about the deportation of fellow members of Ahmed’s rape gang, Qari Abdul Rauf and Adil Khan, have stalled. They were released from prison four years ago and, like Ahmed, they have renounced their Pakistani nationality. The Pakistani government refused to take them, unless Britain extradited Pakistani dissidents – which is, of course, an unacceptable demand. Islamabad is said to be applying the same conditions to the deportation of Ahmed.
The question for Mr Burnham, therefore, is whether he is willing to break relations with Pakistan by applying diplomatic pressure. Britain could cancel visas, stop foreign aid and apply other sanctions – but this would threaten trade and intelligence cooperation.
The incoming prime minister has made a rod for his own back by declaring that “nothing is off the table”. The British public is likely to assume that he meant it. While pragmatists in the Foreign Office will argue that going to war – metaphorically – with Pakistan is not in Britain’s national interest, public opinion is likely to regard it as a price well worth paying to get rid of Ahmed and his associates.
This is an understandable emotional reaction to the horror of the rape gangs’ crimes. Mr Burnham showed empathy in sharing the universal revulsion and the demand to get this “vile” criminal “out of the country”. But as prime minister, he has to govern by reason as well as by emotion.
While Mr Burnham – “like everyone” – wants just to send Ahmed far away, there is a rational argument that he is our problem more than he is Pakistan’s. He came to Britain aged 14 in 1967, so he had lived here for 45 years before his conviction for rape in 2012.
The most important line of Mr Burnham’s statement was: “Victims must come first.” Ahmed has been released on licence. He is electronically tagged and banned from Rochdale and Oldham, so that there should be no repeat of the terrible story of a rape gang victim coming face-to-face with her abuser in Asda. If Ahmed breaches the conditions of his licence, he will go back to prison.
But more must be done to provide victims with full information about where their abusers are and what protections are in place.
The part of Mr Burnham’s statement that is likely to come back to haunt him is the implication that he will stop at nothing to get Ahmed out of the country. His premiership will get off to an uncertain start if he fails to turn a stirring declaration of intent into action.
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