Labor is considering emergency legislation to deport the Pakistani-born leader of a Rochdale grooming gang.Border Security and Asylum Minister Alex Norris said “all options are on the table” when asked in the House of Commons whether the government could fast-track legislation to pave the way for Shabbir Ahmed’s deportation.Ahmed (73), known to his victims as “Dad”, was released last week after serving 14 years of a 22-year sentence for 30 child rapes. He was responsible for luring vulnerable white girls as young as 12, supplying them with alcohol and drugs, gang-raping them in rooms above takeaways in Oldham and Rochdale and transporting them to different flats for sex.The victim’s family said they were deeply horrified and disappointed by his release.Ahmed came to the UK from the Pakistani province of Punjab in 1967 aged 14 and had dual British and Pakistani citizenship at the time of his conviction.He was stripped of his British citizenship in 2016 and is expected to be deported to Pakistan upon release. He successfully avoided deportation because he arrived in the UK before 1971, receiving an exemption under section 7 of the Immigration Act 1971, which preserved the rights of Commonwealth and Irish citizens who were already in the UK when the Act came into force on 1 January 1973. These provisions were put in place to protect the Windrush generation.“The idea that he might be allowed to stay in this country because of a provision in a decades-old law that was written for a completely different time and context is not only ridiculous, it’s disgusting,” Lam said.Norris said he would consider a Conservative proposal to remove the part of the bill that protects any Commonwealth citizen from deportation.Some lawmakers fear Pakistan may not accept him. Conservative MP Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst said: “Is the minister prepared to impose sanctions on Pakistan to ensure that this miserable man is deported?”Norris responded: “We want to work closely with the Pakistani government to deport people who have no right to be here, and that’s what we’re doing.”
