A gang rapist who was an immigrant from Somalia living in the UK is receiving a 14-week luxury hotel and personal therapy package in exchange for his deportation in August, after almost a decade-long legal battle. According to The Times, his deportation costs totaled UK taxpayers £1 million.
Yaqub Ahmed, who is now 34, first arrived in the UK in 2003 and was given refugee status at age 14. He was jailed in 2008 after he and three other men lured a teenage girl into an apartment in London and raped her.
The judge overseeing the case declared he had “no respect for other human beings.”
It was not until April 2015 that he was stripped of his refugee status and was ordered to be deported by then Home Secretary Theresa May. Since then six successive home secretaries had attempted to deport him.
Ahmed fought back with “human rights” appeals alongside lawyers who have worked to keep their identities secret, appearing in front of over 20 judges in 24 court hearings which went as high as the UK’s Court of Appeal.
His first deportation, which was supposed to happen in October 2018, was stopped due to airline passengers demanding he be let off the Turkish Airlines flight he was on in the name of social justice. As he was escorted off by a reluctant Home Office team, video footage captured the passengers, apparently unaware of his heinous crime, applauding and yelling “You’re free, man!”
The UK attempted to deport him two more times after that, but last-ditch legal challenges thwarted them. Two days before one of the planned deportations, in November 2020, Ahmed falsely claimed he would be targeted by terrorists if he returned to Somalia, based on a video that appeared online showing alleged Islamic State gunmen threatening to kill Ahmed.
“They think it’s the end but it’s not …the fight goes on,” Ahmed stated to an immigration officer. “All this time you guys have been coming to see me, I have been planning, I already knew this was coming, I’m two steps ahead. I will challenge this through the courts.”
Even BBC’s Africa editor, Mary Harper, acted as an expert witness to aid this particular appeal, in exchange for around £3,000, also arguing that he could be accused of being a British spy and it would be hard for him to get a job in Somalia.
The video was later found to have been fake and organized by Ahmed himself. Despite this, it delayed his deportation another three years.
Ahmed’s victim stated that it was “absolutely shocking” that these lengthy appeals were so hard to defeat. “Our legal system is a joke,” she said. “We used to say we were quite fair; well, we’re not. Nothing about this has been fair.
“He negated his human rights after he did what he did. It wasn’t a human thing to do. Why are his human rights being prioritised above mine and people like me?”
Court documents have revealed that an agreement was made prior to his planned 2020 deportation that UK taxpayer money would support Ahmed for three and a half months after his arrival in Somalia so as to not violate his “human rights.”
These accommodations have been applied to his final deportation, which took place in August. He was transported via a charter plane.
The media is just now able to report on his case, after a, as Dawn Alford, executive director of the Society of Editors stated, “hugely concerning” court order issued last December granted Ahmed anonymity until “the first day of the 15th week” after his removal from the UK.
