Seven members of the latest vile Rochdale grooming gang have been convicted of exploiting two white young girls as ‘sex slaves’.
The gang preyed on the vulnerabilities of the victims to groom them from the age of 13 over a five-year-long campaign of abuse between 2001 and 2006.
Both girls had ‘deeply troubled home lives’ and were given drugs, alcohol, cigarette, places to stay and people to be with, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard.
They were expected to have sex ‘whenever and wherever’ the defendants and other men wanted in filthy flats, on rancid mattresses, in cars, car parks, alleyways and disused warehouses.
Jurors deliberated for three weeks before delivering their unanimous guilty verdicts on Friday.
Three of the abusers, Mohammed Zahid, 64, Mushtaq Ahmed, 67, and Kasir Bashir, 50, – all born in Pakistan – were stallholders on Rochdale’s indoor market.
The depraved ringleader of the latest gang Zahid was even known as ‘Knickerman’ because of his underwear stall at the centuries-old market.
The pot-bellied, wispy-haired father-of-three exploited his products’ appeal to young girls to lure in vulnerable youngsters who were then subjected to ‘years of misery’.
Mohammed Zahid (left) is facing a facing lengthy jail sentences after being convicted of grooming young girls in Rochdale
Mushtaq Ahmed enabled fellow gang members to use the cellar of his clothing shop in Rochdale to abuse girls
Seven members of the latest vile Rochdale grooming gang have been convicted of exploiting two young girls as ‘sex slaves’ (file photo)
In 2016, Zahid was jailed for five years in an earlier grooming gang case after he engaged in sexual activity in 2006 with a 15-year-old girl who he met when she visited his stall to buy tights for school.
Bashir did not attend the current trial as jurors were ordered not to speculate why but it can be revealed that he absconded while on bail before the trial got under way.
It can also be reported that co-defendants Mohammed Shahzad, 44, Naheem Akram, 48, and Nisar Hussain, 41, were remanded in custody with their bail revoked in January before the jury was sworn in.
Starting when they were aged just 13, two terrified girls were ‘passed around’ for sex between fellow traders and taxi drivers – all from Rochdale’s Pakistani community – between 2001 and 2006.
They would then be callously ‘discarded’, jurors in a ten-week trial heard.
Following a string of successful prosecutions which made the Greater Manchester town grimly synonymous with the scourge of grooming gangs, the victims – now in their 30s – decided to come forward to seek justice over their ordeals.
In harrowing detail, one described her terror as she was raped by ‘massive’ and ‘aggressive’ paedophile.
Gang member and former shopkeeper Mushtaq Ahmed, 67, arriving at court during his trial
Heartbreakingly it also heard how the girl – at the time living in a children’s home – was scandalously dismissed by social workers as having been ‘prostituting’ herself from the age of ten.
As the pair’s abusers now face lengthy prison terms, it can be revealed that two – including Zahid, who also used the nickname ‘Bossman’ – have already spent time behind bars over Rochdale child sex rings.
Jurors also weren’t told that the three British-born members of the gang were locked up partway through the trial following ‘intelligence’ that they planned to flee to Pakistan.
A fourth skipped bail as the case got underway and was tried in his absence – his whereabouts are unknown.
They are the first Asian grooming gang to be brought to justice since Labour faced accusations of a cover-up for resisting calls for a public inquiry into how a generation of girls were betrayed by police and social services.
According to one estimate, upwards of 250,000 girls have been attacked repeatedly by street gangs in 50 British towns and cities over the past 40 years.
Today’s convictions represent the eighth time that a group of men of mainly Pakistani heritage have been convicted of grooming girls for sex in Rochdale in the early 2000s.
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