You can find the The height of child grooming scandal saw over 1,400 girls in the area being exploited and gangs of predominantly Pakistani men. Lord Ahmed of Rotherham gave a harsh, but on the surface, very brave, critique to the community that he was raised.
“As a proud Muslim Rotherham boy, and a proud Muslim from Kashmir, Pakistan, I was shocked at the revelations of sexual abuse of young girls in this town,” he stated in a newspaper article. He claimed that mosques were not doing enough to give strong moral leadership to British Muslims.
A controversial speech by the Labour peer in 2012 suggested that one reason many South Yorkshire teenagers became sex predators was their parents long work hours.
A section of the speech stated that although no one knows why Asian men abuse young girls, it’s obvious they’re young boys brought up in this nation.
Lord Ahmed of Rotherham (pictured in 1999) delivered a stern, and on the face of things, quite brave critique of the community he grew up in
“Maybe they are broken people themselves. Perhaps their fathers worked long hours and have been away from the home. Nobody is there to watch them or take care of them.
Ahmed received a platform to make such public contributions at the time. His status as a pioneering Muslim parliamentarian – whose own immigrant parents worked endless hours in local steel factories – demanded nothing less.
Such a twisted statement, how selfish, after Rotherham’s addition of him to the extensive list of child sex offenders convicted yesterday.
It’s a beautiful thing to have hindsight, but it’s difficult to look at Ahmed’s political rise/fall without questioning how such a clearly ineligible man was allowed to be in Westminster’s halls of power so long.
A series of horrendous crimes were committed almost fifty years ago in the Sheffield Crown Court trial. However, many of Ahmed’s sexual offenses date back to a much earlier time.
The jury unanimously convicted him. However, it was not the first time that the predatory actions of the 64-year old peer had led to him in trouble.
In late 2020, the outwardly respectable community leader – who had been ennobled with great fanfare by Tony Blair – was forced to resign from the House of Lords in disgrace after being found, on the balance of probabilities, to have sexually abused a young woman.
Tahira Zaman (a mother of two) was his victim. She was among several whistleblowers that bravely submitted to the 2019 BBC Newsnight Report. It accused Tahira Zaman of using her position as a parliamentary member to have sex with extremely vulnerable women.
But how absurd and self-serving are these remarks? He was just one of many child sex offenders convicted in Rotherham yesterday. Pictured at Sheffield Magistrates Court by Nazir Ahmed
Mohammed Tariq (left), and Mohammed Farouq, (right), were both found guilty of indecent assaults
After being conned into believing that a Muslim faith healer had abused her, Ms Zaman suffered from anxiety and depression. She contacted Ahmed’s Parliamentary Office.
The peer wrote to Cressida Dick, Met Police Chief, on her behalf. After that, he persuaded her for dinner.
Ahmed offered Ms Zaman a place at the meeting in his East London home a couple of months later.
After making her a cup, she claims he had added a drug to it. Before that, the report stated, he sat down on her lap telling her how he was sexually stimulated.
Later, Ms Zaman agreed to have sexual relations with the peer. The affair lasted for two months, and Ms Zaman claimed that it ended when the peer made it clear that he was not going to divorce his wife.
She continued, “He took advantage” He used his power.
Newsnight was told the story by several women who also claimed to have shared similar stories. They said that Ahmed approached them seeking support or help, and were only then asked to return their sexual favours.
An anonymous source claimed that Ahmed wanted to’sleep with me. One man said that Ahmed was seen proposing to a woman seeking internship.
Even though none of Newsnight’s allegations were sufficient to warrant criminal prosecution, the accusations were strong enough to make him resign days before the release of the report by the committee, which recommended that he be expelled from the House.
His accusers may have been motivated by the media coverage.
Yesterday’s conviction is the end of an extraordinary fall from grace that was previously celebrated as an inspiration role model.
Nazir Ahmed was born in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. He moved to England in 1969 at the age of 11. At that time, he couldn’t speak English. While his teachers recommended that he be a car mechanic and became a successful property developer, he earned a university diploma.
Having joined the Labour Party aged 18 – around the same time he got married – Ahmed moved through the political ranks, becoming Rotherham’s first Asian councillor in 1990, and subsequently the town’s youngest magistrate.
Tony Blair elevated him to the rank of third Muslim peer in 1998.
In Rotherham, Home was a large detached house that the couple lived in. It was also where they had their two children. Ahmed, back then, promised that he would be the New Labour’s ‘voice of the community’.
This theme was his main focus, and he began making public remarks about the shortcomings of multiculturalism.
For example, in the early 2000s he criticized the use of the face veil and was against forced marriage. He also called for English-language sermons at mosques to facilitate integration.
He also called for British Muslims to face ‘all those preaching hatred’ after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
However, not all of his contributions were equally well-received by progressives.
He hosted a book launch at the Lords in 2005 for a well-known anti-Semite, Israel Shamir. In 2006, he also invited an Al Qaeda suspect to visit Parliament.
Ahmed, who described the 2007 award of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie (author of The Satanic Verses) as insulting Muslims in 2007, said that Rushdie was a man with ‘blood on both his hands’.
After he was rumored in Labour circles about his judgement, fears were confirmed when Ahmed became the subject of a tumultuous court case.
After his Jaguar crashed into a stationary vehicle on the M1 near Sheffield and killed its driver Slovakian Martin Gombar (28), he was found guilty of dangerous driving.
Investigators from the police discovered that Ahmed sent five long texts to his driver while driving up to 60 mph on the highway. This was minutes prior to the collision.
He was originally sentenced to twelve weeks imprisonment, but he was freed after 16 days of Court of Appeal suspension.
In a twist of fate, the affair led to his resignation from Labour Party. He decided to discuss anti-Semitic conspiracy theories regarding what had happened on a foreign television network in 2013.
Ahmed was asked his prison time during an interview from a Pakistani Urdu-language TV station. Ahmed replied that the High Court judge who jailed him was originally appointed after assisting a Tony Blair ‘Jewish friend’.
Ahmed blamed the sentence’s length on Jewish pressure to the courts, who owned newspapers and television channels and wanted him punished for his support of the Palestinians.
However, even though he offered a sincere apology after the racist remarks were made public, he was called by Labour’s national Executive Committee. In order to avoid an unpleasant confrontation, he quit Labour’s national executive committee, and was summoned by them.
It is, however, more difficult than attending political meetings to avoid Crown court appearances.
Yesterday, the judge granted bail to the victim and he will be back for sentencing within one month. Many of his victims, who documented his sexual misconducts, hope his next stint in prison will be longer than the one he had.