Rochdale grooming gang ringleader Shabir Ahmed: What we know about his prison release and deportation row

A grooming gang leader at the centre of a deportation row has been released from prison, it is understood, so why can't he be deported?

Shabir Ahmed served 14 years for multiple rape and sexual offences against young girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

There had been calls made to deport Ahmed, 73, but documents published online, apparently sent from the Probation Service to one of his victims, state that he cannot be deported back to Pakistan due to a 55-year-old law that bars his removal.

Here is everything you need to know.

Why was he jailed?

Ahmed, ringleader of the notorious Rochdale grooming gang, was sentenced to 19 years in prison at Liverpool Crown Court in 2012. He was one of nine men convicted of offences against five girls.

Between early 2008 and 2010, girls as young as 12 were plied with alcohol and drugs, gang-raped in rooms above takeaway shops and ferried to different flats in taxis where cash was paid to use the girls for sex.

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What is his status?

It is understood he has been freed on licence and told he must initially live at a bail hostel, which is staffed 24 hours, and wear an electronic GPS tag meaning he cannot return to his last known address on Windsor Avenue in Oldham.

He is also subject to an "exclusion zone" which means he cannot go to parts of Rochdale.

Why can't he be deported?

Ahmed, who has been stripped of his British citizenship, leaving him with only Pakistani nationality, is unable to be deported due to a 1971 law that forbids the removal of a small group of Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK more than 50 years ago.

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What can be done about it?

But Downing Street says Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had asked Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to consider options for ensuring he is deported, after describing his case as "particularly heinous".

In a statement, Number 10 said: "We are absolutely clear that where foreign nationals commit offences in the UK we will do everything in our power to remove them."

The likely next prime minister Andy Burnham called for senior ministers to "review all possible options" for his deportation.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said her party would attempt to amend the Government's Immigration and Asylum Bill to "close the loophole so that this man can be deported immediately".

Will Pakistan have him back?

It is very likely Pakistan would resist the return of Ahmed.

In 2019, the Home Office stripped Islamic State recruit Shamima Begum of her British citizenship to deny her a return to the UK to raise her baby son, who she had given birth to in a Syrian refugee camp.

Begum is UK-born and of Bangladeshi heritage, although she has never held a Bangladeshi passport and is not a dual citizen.

But Bangladesh swiftly said there was no question of her being allowed to enter into the country, sparking a diplomatic rift.

Ms Begum remains in a Syrian camp, where her baby son died in 2019 before the citizenship decision.

(c) Sky News 2026: Rochdale grooming gang ringleader Shabir Ahmed: What we know about his prison release