ISLAMABAD: British Pakistani community activist and lawyer Akhmed Yaqoob on Wednesday said the Pakistani community in the UK could not be held accountable for Shabbir Ahmed's crimes, stating the community should not be made a target for a crime one Pakistani commits.
Shabbir Ahmed was jailed in 2012 for 22 years for multiple child sexual offenses, including rape, when he was the ringleader of a gang of similarly predatory men targeting girls in Rochdale, northern England. UK’s Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood has announced plans to change UK law to allow a convicted pedophile to be deported following his release from prison.
Speaking on Pakistan TV Digital's South Speaks with Saqib, lawyer Yaqoob said that Mahmood was trying to impress and appease new voters as she had lost a lot of her vote bank.
In response to the plan to deport the convicted pedophile, Yaqoob said, “Shabana Mahmood should be ashamed of herself for even considering that.” He said the criminal had lived in the UK for more than 40 years.
“If he was someone who lives in Pakistan, who is paying taxes in Pakistan and has come to the United Kingdom and committed these offenses, then these topics can be spoken about,” he said.
He said that Mahmood knew she had lost a lot of “Muslim voters and voters from the migrant communities.”
He also said that the majority of the grooming gangs or the people convicted of grooming and sexual offences were from a white background.
“The majority of people committing sexual offenses against children, pedophilia, grooming and all that, they are from the white background, middle-aged background,” he said. “And those are statistics.”
“So, every time a Pakistani does it, everyone gets labelled with the same brush.”
He said that the Pakistani community was targeted if a criminal is Pakistani; however, the same treatment was not given to “white grooming gangs.”
“The whole Pakistani community cannot be held accountable for Shabbir Ahmed's crimes,” he said.
“Pakistan should not be made a target for what Shabbir Ahmed has done,” he added.
