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3 British Pakistanis to Lose Their Nationality After Being Convicted of Physical Abuse

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Three members of a notorious grooming gang will be stripped of their British citizenship following a court ruling.

Abdul Aziz, Adil Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf were among nine jailed for crimes including rape and trafficking of girls as young as 13 in Rochdale, in 2012.

Theresa May, then Home Secretary, ruled in 2015 that the Pakistani nationals should not remain British.

The testimony of one of the five victims of the Rochdale grooming ring revealed the depth of the exploitation she suffered.

Speaking at the conclusion of a 10-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court, the woman, who cannot be identified, said she was forced to have sex with up to five different men in a day, at least four times a week.

“At first I felt really bad, dirty and ashamed. But after a while it had been going on for so long and with so many different men, I didn’t feel anything towards it anymore. “What they did to me was evil, they ripped away my dignity, my self-esteem,” she said.

Lord Justice Sales said: “Given the extremely serious nature of the offending by each appellant, there is no good ground for calling that conclusion into question.”

Aziz, Khan and Rauf were given jail sentences of between six and nine years in 2012 but have since been released on licence.

In some cases their victims, aged in their early teens, had been raped and pimped out to paying customers in Rochdale and Oldham.

Lord Justice Sales said the men were motivated by “lust and greed” which amounted to “serious organised crime” and that stripping them of citizenship was “conducive to the public good”.

“All the men treated the girls as though they were worthless and beyond all respect,” he added.

While the decision paves the way for the government to deport them at the end of their sentences, they would have a further legal right to appeal and the process could take months.

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