Plane mutiny
kept a gang rapist in the UK: Somali man whose deportation from the UK was
stopped by plane passengers raped a 16-year-old girl in London and his
accomplice went on to fight for ISIS
The
deportation of Yaqub Ahmed was dramatically halted by plane passengers. The
man, 29, was being returned to Somalia after being involved in a gang-rape.
Passengers complained he was being separated from his family in the UK, by
Martin Beckford, 10/15/18, Daily Mail UK.
A Somalian
whose deportation from Britain was dramatically halted after airline passengers
staged a mutiny demanding his release can be exposed today as a convicted gang
rapist who was being kicked out of the country because of his sickening crime.
Officials
escorting Yaqub Ahmed on a flight from Heathrow to Turkey were forced to
abandon his deportation when around a dozen holidaymakers who felt sorry for
him angrily intervened shortly before take-off.
At one
stage during the astonishing episode, filmed on mobile phones, one traveler
complained: ‘They’re separating him from his family’, while others chanted
‘take him off the plane’.
When
harassed security guards caved in and walked 29-year-old Ahmed off the Turkish
Airlines flight, he was seen thanking those on board for their support as they
cheered and applauded. One person was heard declaring: ‘You’re free, man!’+8
But the
passengers who thought they were doing a good deed were unaware that the man
they were defending had been sentenced to nine years in jail for his part in a
vicious gang rape of a teenage girl – and that another member of his gang later
fought for Islamic State in Syria.
Today
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how Ahmed and three other youths preyed on a
16-year-old stranger after she became separated from her friends during a night
out in London’s Leicester Square, in August 2007.
In a
planned attack, they lured her back to a flat in Crouch End, North London, by
pretending her friends were waiting for her there – then gang-raped her.
The
gang, aged between 18 and 20, were caught when neighbors heard the girl’s cries
for help and rang police.
All
four men denied rape, despite DNA evidence. They were found guilty at Wood
Green Crown Court and each jailed for nine years. Police detective Emma Bird
said at the time: ‘The sentences given out by the judge reflect the seriousness
of this offence.’
Ahmed,
18 at the time of the rape and living in Clerkenwell, North London, is thought
to have been granted refugee status after arriving in Britain from war-torn
Somalia as a boy.
He was
released from prison after serving little more than four years, and lived in a
halfway house in North London until recently. Because he had been jailed for
such a serious crime, the Home Office ordered his deportation, which led to him
being placed on the flight to Istanbul last Tuesday afternoon.
He
received a temporary reprieve because of the impromptu intervention of
passengers. But when video of the protest was published by MailOnline, hundreds
of readers expressed their outrage.
One
wrote: ‘The police should have been called and all the passengers who were
interfering should have been arrested and removed from the plane.’
Another
user said: ‘Looked like a plane full of snowflakes.’ And a third pointed out:
‘Now it will cost a lot more to fly the man back on a private charter! Well
done silly interfering, self-seeking, do-gooding idiots!’
Ahmed
is now believed to be in an immigration detention centre while officials try to
place him on another flight out of the UK, but this process could take months
particularly if his lawyers use his temporary reprieve as an opportunity to
appeal against his deportation.
Last
night, Tory backbencher Philip Hollobone, who has tabled bills to speed up the
deportation of foreign criminals, said: ‘We need to deport these people and
members of the public should not be allowed to obstruct the proper course of
justice.
‘Officials
accompanying the deportee need to react appropriately to passengers who do not
know what is going on. To simply walk off in the face of passenger confusion is
not good enough.’
Harry
Fletcher of the Victims’ Rights Campaign said: ‘This deportation was clearly in
the public interest. Sitting deportees in the general passenger area of a plane
is wrong and leads to this kind of ill-informed protest.’
It is
not the first time that planned deportations have been disrupted on planes. In
July, a Swedish student filmed herself halting the deportation of an Afghan
asylum seeker on a Turkish Airlines flight from Gothenburg to Istanbul. Elin
Ersson said in the video that was streamed live on Facebook: ‘A person is going
to get deported to Afghanistan where there is war and he’s going to get
killed.’
Then,
in August, a Turkish Airlines pilot refused to take off from Heathrow after
campaigners convinced him that the asylum seeker on his jet would face
beheading by the Taliban if he was returned to Afghanistan. Virgin Airlines has
stopped assisting the deportation of illegal immigrants after pressure from
activists.
The
Home Office previously spent millions of pounds a year chartering planes to fly
failed asylum seekers and foreign national offenders to their home countries,
most commonly Albania, Pakistan and Nigeria. But because of the cost of the
flights, it now increasingly books seats on commercial services.
Latest
figures show the Home Office spent £17 million on scheduled flights and £8.6
million on charter flights to deport people in 2016-17.
A Home
Office spokesman said: ‘All foreign nationals who are given a custodial
sentence will be considered for removal. Those who abuse our hospitality by
committing crimes in the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to
deport them and we have removed more than 43,000 foreign offenders since 2010.’
One of
Ahmed’s co-defendants, Adnan Mohamud, was granted refugee status in Britain in
2002 having been born in Somalia, and is still thought to be in the UK. The
youngest member of the gang, Ondogo Ahmed, travelled to Syria to fight for
Islamic State just months after he was freed from jail. He is thought to have
been killed a few weeks later.
Additional reporting by Abul
Taher, Jonathan Bucks and Mark Wood
UK: Silly airline passengers block deportation
flight of Somali convicted rapist, by Ann Corcoran, 10/15/18.
This
is what is wrong with the West and why the years ahead for the UK, and Europe
as a whole, will be bad.
From The Daily Mail:
Plane mutiny
kept a gang rapist in the UK: Somali man whose deportation from the UK was
stopped by plane passengers raped a 16-year-old girl in London and his
accomplice went on to fight for ISIS
A Somalian whose deportation from Britain was dramatically halted after
airline passengers staged a mutiny demanding his release can be exposed today
as a convicted gang rapist who was being kicked out of the country because of
his sickening crime.
Officials
escorting Yaqub Ahmed on a flight from Heathrow to Turkey were forced to
abandon his deportation when around a dozen holidaymakers who felt sorry for
him angrily intervened shortly before take-off.
At
one stage during the astonishing episode, filmed on mobile phones, one
traveller complained: ‘They’re separating him from his family’, while others
chanted ‘take him off the plane’.
Watch
the astounding video: When harassed
security guards caved in and walked 29-year-old Ahmed off the Turkish Airlines
flight, he was seen thanking those on board for their support as they cheered
and applauded.
One
person was heard declaring: ‘You’re free, man!’
But
the passengers who thought they were doing a good deed were unaware that the
man they were defending had been sentenced to nine years in jail for his part
in a vicious gang rape of a teenage girl – and that another member of his gang
later fought for Islamic State in Syria.
Today The Mail on Sunday can reveal how Ahmed and three other youths preyed on a
16-year-old stranger after she became separated from her friends during a night
out in London’s Leicester Square, in August 2007.
The Mail says
he and a co-defendant both had refugee status in the UK.
This
post is filed in my ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive here.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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