https://metro.co.uk/2018/10/14/man-...rs-revealed-as-convicted-gang-rapist-8036129/
A man prevented from being deported by passengers who staged a protest until he was taken off their flight from Heathrow had reportedly been convicted of rape.
Home Office officials were forced to abandon the deportation attempt and remove Yaqub Ahmed from the Turkish Airlines flight as it prepared to fly to Istanbul on Tuesday afternoon.
According to the Mail on Sunday, the man being escorted from the plane was Somalian man Yaqub Ahmed who was being deported because he was a convicted gang rapist.
Video released last week showed protesting passengers shouting ‘take him off the plane’ as the man screamed he had been separated from his family.
As the 29-year-old man was eventually taken off the flight, he was seen thanking those on board for their support as they cheered and applauded.
The passengers were unaware the man they were defending had been sentenced to nine years in jail for his part in the gang rape of a teenage girl at a flat in North London, the Mail on Sunday reports.
He was also allegedly part of a gang that included another member who later fought for Islamic State in Syria.
Ahmed and three others attacked the 16-year-old girl after she became separated from her friends during a night out in London’s Leicester Square, in August 2007.
He and his accomplices were caught when neighbours heard the girl’s screams and called police.
All four men denied rape, despite the existence of DNA evidence and they were found guilty at Wood Green crown court and each jailed for nine years.
Ahmed was reportedly released from prison after serving just over four years. He is now said to be in an immigration detention cente while officials try to place him on another flight out of the UK.
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.’
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.
