A rapist jailed over a brutal gang attack on a 16-year-old girl is finally getting deported after a years long legal battle.
Yaqub Ahmed, 30, had already been placed on a deportation flight in 2018, but Home Office staff were forced to remove him before take-off when fellow passengers, unaware of his crimes, heard him screaming and started a dramatic protest.
The Somalian native was jailed for nine years in 2009, after he and his accomplices preyed on the drunk and lost teenager in 2007, in tourist hotspot Trafalgar Square, London.
An immigration judge summed up the case by saying: "The victim was described as alone, lost, without money and under the influence of drink.
"She went with [Ahmed] and others to a flat and was gang raped within 20 minutes of arriving.
"Her sanitary protection was forcibly removed, and she was hit and bruised when resisting. In the course of the rapes, photographs of her were taken, although not by the claimant.
"At trial, [Ahmed's] defence to the effect that she had consented was described by the judge as 'absurd.'
"The circumstances of the crime were such as to cause the judge to describe the defendants as having no respect for human beings, reflecting that the sounds of her hysterical distress and screaming could be heard on the 999 call made by neighbours, and that the victim would suffer severe and enduring psychological harm as a result of the attack.
"None of them had been working, they spent their time hanging about at night in the West End when the clubs were closing.
"The judge said the applicant's only mitigation was his age. [Ahmed] continues to deny his guilt, still maintaining it was consensual sex."
He was released in 2012, and returned to prison on licence two years later after being arrested on suspicion of GBH, although the charges were later dropped.
Ahmed, who claimed asylum in the UK at the age of 14, was returned to a detention centre after the aborted deportation flight.
But after a suicide attempt and signs of deteriorating mental health, a fresh legal challenge was mounted by his legal team, and he was bailed in March 2019 awaiting the new case.
But the sex offender tore off an electronic ankle tag and was arrested in Liverpool on April 15 last year, trying to travel to Belfast.
He later admitted he wanted to travel to Spain via Dublin in a bid to avoid returning to the Somalian capital of Mogadishu.
An initial tribunal judge concluded the security situation in Mogadishu had improved in recent years, particularly with the decline of Islamist terror group Al-Shabab in the city.
According to court documents: "The judge held that some money from abroad, namely from his family in the UK, would be available to him initially while he was seeking employment, and that he had been equipped by a series of prison courses to embark on employment in joinery and construction or indeed catering or cleaning on his return to Somalia.
"Taking into account details of the country situation in the relevant case law, the judge noted there was a vibrant construction industry in Mogadishu...
"[The judge] found in particular that it was a matter of great concern that the claimant had not completed work regarding his sexual offending, and he retained unhealthy and distorted views towards women and relationships, and authority figures, in particular the police.
"It was clear the claimant had failed to accept responsibility for his criminal behaviour. He characterised the offending as particularly serious and without mitigating factors."
Ahmed appealed claiming the lower Immigration and Asylum tribunal had not taken proper account the effect of deportation on his mental health, and the likelihood he could commit suicide.
Ahmed also argued that as a child in Mogadishu he had been kidnapped and held for ransom, and even been dangled out of a window by his captors.
He also said he had fallen victim to Modern Slavery by being forced to work as a shoe shiner for two years by a neighbour.
But the Tribunal heard that the Home Office had investigated the mental health treatment options available in his home country and had paid for a treatment plan with a specific mental health facility in Mogadishu.
In a final judgment from the Upper Tier Immigration and Asylum Chamber, judge Mrs Justice Foster DBE rejected an appeal claiming Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, prohibiting inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, would be breached.
She concluded: "The Secretary of State for the Home Deaprtment (SSHD) was not making an error of law when she determined that an Immigration Judge properly applying the law could not find in favour of Yaqub Ahmed on an Article 3 claim in this case.
"The claim must be dismissed."
