After five years, 24 court appearances, 20 judges and £85,000 in legal aid, Britain finally sends plane-mutiny rapist back to Somalia… with plush hotel, armed guards and therapy you paid for
By Mark Hookham Senior Reporter For The Mail On Sunday 17:00 EST 18 Nov 2023 ,
Deportation first thwarted by mutiny of passengers on flight five years ago
He is the vile gang rapist whose deportation was infamously thwarted at the last minute by a mutiny of virtue-signalling airline passengerson the same flight.
Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal how it has taken another five years to finally send Yaqub Ahmed back to Somalia – with Ministers forced to offer an extraordinary package of concessions to break his relentless cycle of dubious human rights appeals.
To secure his expulsion, the criminal was given a 14-week stay in one of Somalia's most luxurious hotels, all meals included, plus armed guards and a personalised therapy package after complaining of mental health issues – all at taxpayers' expense. In contrast, the woman he attacked when she was just 16 has struggled to find such help for the mental scars he inflicted.
Ahmed has dragged his deportation fight through at least 24 separate tribunal or court hearings, in front of 20 or more judges, as he made a series of false claims. But today this newspaper can reveal that the 34-year-old was finally expelled in August, after costing taxpayers up to £1 million in legal, prison and deportation costs, including the generous 'care package' to greet his arrival in Somalia.
Last night, Ahmed's victim said it was 'absolutely shocking' that officials were forced to go to such lengths to defeat his repeated human rights appeals.
'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.'
How rapist avoided deportation for years after plane passenger mutiny
Details of Ahmed's extraordinary case exposes the ease with which foreign criminals run rings around officials and comes just days after the Supreme Court torpedoed Rishi Sunak's flagship scheme to deport Channel migrants to Rwanda.
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman told The Mail on Sunday the case was an example of how criminals exploit human rights laws to make 'spurious, repetitive and ultimately obstructive' legal claims to thwart deportation.
Our exclusive investigation also reveals that:
Ahmed has cost taxpayers almost £85,000 in legal aid;
A chartered flight used to finally deport him cost around £200,000 – and it is unclear whether any other deportees were on board;
In an audacious plot, Ahmed fabricated a claim that he would be targeted by Islamic State terrorists if he returned to Somalia, arranging for a fake death threat video to be posted online;
Ahmed exploited modern slavery laws by falsely claiming to have been under the control of a UK drugs gang;
A senior BBC editor was paid to give evidence for Ahmed – but her testimony was heavily criticised by judges and her objectivity questioned;
A draconian legal order gagged this newspaper from revealing Ahmed's duplicity until now, as he was granted anonymity for 15 weeks after he was deported.
Ahmed was granted refugee status in 2003 after arriving in Britain from Somalia aged 14.
But he was jailed in 2008 after he and three other men lured their teenage victim to a flat in London before brutally attacking her. A judge lambasted him for having 'no respect for other human beings'.
In April 2015, Theresa May, then Home Secretary, stripped him of his refugee status and slapped a deportation order on him. This was, however, simply the opening salvo of a tortuous legal battle.
The string of hearings went as high as the Court of Appeal and Government lawyers have fought off three claims by the rapist and his lawyers for judicial review.
Six successive Home Secretaries have attempted to remove him from the UK. In October 2018, his deportation dramatically collapsed when woke holidaymakers, unaware of his appalling crime, mutinied and demanded he be hauled off the Turkish Airlines jet that was about to fly him out of the UK as it sat on the tarmac at Heathrow.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12765973/Britain-sends-plane-mutiny-rapist-Somalia-hotel-guards.html