The Rape of Britain > Most important trial of the year being ignored by media in the UK

 

The rape gang trial the UK establishment doesn’t want you to know about

Six Pakistani men are accused of abusing children in “the most degrading way imaginable”

Published 25 Aug, 2026 19:01 | Updated 25 Aug, 2026 20:05

Three alleged members of the Rochdale grooming gang pictured outside Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester, England, January 14, 2025 ©  Getty Images ;   Peter Byrne ;   Christopher Furlong

The trial of six members of a Pakistani ‘grooming gang’ has quietly restarted in Manchester. The retrial hasn’t made the headlines, and looking at the sordid details of the case, it’s clear the British establishment wants to keep it that way.

The six suspects were alleged members of the Rochdale grooming gang – a group of Muslim men, predominantly Pakistani, who trafficked, sexually abused, and raped underage white British girls in the northern English town between the 1980s and 2010s. More than 75 men have been charged and 53 convicted since Greater Manchester Police began investigating the gang in 2010.

A view of the Golden Mosque Islamic Centre beside high-rise flats in Rochdale, England, February 19, 2024 ©  Getty Images;   Christopher Furlong

What are the men accused of?

The suspects have been charged with 46 counts of rape, sexual assault, and ‘assault by penetration’, with two of the men facing more than a dozen charges each.

• Tahrir Rashid, 53, 12 counts of rape, 3 counts of indecent assault, 1 count of assault by penetration

• Mohammed Saleem, 46, 8 counts of rape

• Sucklane Shah, 46, 2 counts of rape

• Itfaq Hussain, 45, 3 counts of rape

• Arshad Mohammed, 55, 5 counts of rape

• Amjad Mahmood, 53, 12 counts of rape, 2 counts of indecency with a child, 1 count of indecent assault, 2 counts of assault by penetration

All of the suspects’ alleged offenses took place between 2003 and 2008, and involved two girls who were as young as 13 when they were “passed around” between the gang, according to prosecutors. Rashid, the alleged ringleader, is also accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.

What happened in the first trial?

The six men were tried last year, but the trial collapsed with no explanation in December. When reporting restrictions were lifted a month later, it was revealed that the jurors had formed a WhatsApp group to discuss the case, and had shared documentaries on the subject of grooming gangs. 

Read more

The rape gang crisis: How the UK betrayed its own people

As the jury had been banned from talking about the case outside of court, the judge concluded that “no course of action that I can reasonably take can cure the position that now exists because of these multi-layered difficulties,” and halted the trial.

Before the trial collapsed, the court heard how the group abused two girls in the “most humiliating and degrading way imaginable.” One of the victims, identified only as ‘Girl C’, was collected from school by Rashid, plied with alcohol, and raped repeatedly by the gang. ‘Girl C’ was raped a dozen times by Shah over several months, prosecutors alleged.

Mohammed told the other victim, ‘Girl A’, that he ran a modeling agency as a ruse to take nude photographs of her. She was allegedly raped by at least three members of the gang.

Both girls were described by the prosecution as “very vulnerable children with chaotic home lives,” which made them “easy prey for men with an unhealthy interest in having sex with children.” All six suspects pleaded not guilty.

Why do the British authorities want this kept quiet?

The proliferation of grooming gangs – or ‘rape gangs’, as right-wing politicians label them – is a national embarrassment for all levels of the British state. Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Police were warned of the gang’s activity in Rochdale as far back as 2007, but refused to investigate allegations of organized rape by Pakistani gangs until 2012, for fear “of being tarnished with a race brush,” according to an independent review published in 2024.

An excerpt from the 'Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham', or 'Jay Report', published August 26, 2014

A 2014 report on rape gangs in Rotherham found that social workers, youth workers, and police officers ignored reports that 1,400 children had been abused by the gangs, partly for fear of being seen as racist. A nationwide audit published this year concluded that authorities in 50 towns and cities were reluctant to investigate the gangs due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of perpetrators were of Pakistani origin.

The most shocking report, funded by Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe and published in June, found that Pakistani rape gangs operated in 149 of the UK’s 317 municipalities. The report determined that a “bare minimum” of 250,000 women and girls had been raped by grooming gangs since the year 2000, and that senior politicians helped the gangs escape prosecution. 

These politicians included London Mayor Sadiq Khan, of Pakistani descent, who denied the existence of grooming gangs in the British capital, despite having evidence proving otherwise, and former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who as director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, let 13,000 pedophiles off with warning letters instead of prosecuting them.

Read more

Britain’s rape gangs: Here’s what’s in the report the mainstream media is ignoring

Lowe’s report was published at a time of heightened racial tension in the UK, coming a week after a Sudanese migrant attempted to behead a man in Belfast, and six months after British police handcuffed a dying white teenager after the man who stabbed him falsely accused him of racism.

It detailed a litany of crimes committed against white girls, with one victim “raped by between six and seven hundred different men over the course of three years,” and others raped by dogs, cut with knives, and “subjected to penetration with objects.” Lowe’s report, and earlier government-backed reports, found that some children were trafficked to Pakistan by the gangs.

Starmer’s ruling Labour Party voted en masse against a Conservative motion calling for a national statutory inquiry into the gangs last year. Starmer’s party eventually backed down under public pressure and opened a probe earlier this year, which is ongoing.

Are there more trials to come?

The six suspects currently on trial were charged in 2023 as part of Greater Manchester Police’s ‘Operation Lytton’. Active since 2015, Operation Lytton is aimed at arresting and prosecuting suspects who were overlooked by earlier investigations. The operation has resulted in 32 convictions to date.

Fourteen suspects are currently awaiting trial, according to the most recent information from Greater Manchester Police.

Outside the greater Manchester area, six other large-scale grooming gang trials resulted in convictions this year. In Bradford, where 20% of all residents are of Pakistani descent, 15 men were sentenced in June for 88 rape offenses against the same 14-year-old girl. 

Eight men in south Wales have been charged with raping eight children, with their trial due to begin in early 2028.

The Rape of Britain continues > UK child sex trafficker from Iran arrested in Switzerland; 3 Muslims, a woman and a Sikh found guilty of CSA

 

Child sex trafficker in court after Swiss arrest

Victoria Scheer,Yorkshireand

Tom Ingall,Sheffield Crown Court

A convicted child sex trafficker has appeared in court following his arrest in Switzerland.

Sharam Muhamadi helped Bawan Harwe contact girls as young as 12 on social media platform Snapchat, before they were groomed, abused and raped by Harwe, a trial at Sheffield Crown Court earlier this year heard.

Muhamadi, 21, stopped attending the trial in June before being found guilty in his absence of two counts of arranging or facilitating travel of another person with a view of exploitation, and a warrant for his arrest was issued.

Following his extradition from Switzerland, he was brought before the same court on Wednesday, where he was remanded in custody until his next hearing on 3 September.

The court had previously heard that Muhamadi and Harwe both worked in convenience stores in Doncaster and lived in a flat in Hexthorpe.

They used fake names to message the girls, who were aged between 12 and 16, and offered them drugs, e-cigarettes, money and taxi journeys to entice them to meet in person.

Six of the seven girls were given alcohol and drugs before being raped by Harwe, the trial heard.

At Sheffield Crown Court in June, Iraqi national Harwe, 28, was sentenced to 29 years imprisonment.

Muhamadi, who is from Iran, stopped attending the trial part-way through and was convicted in his absence.

He had been remanded in custody between being charged and the beginning of the trial, South Yorkshire Police said at the time, but his defence team's application for bail was then granted by the court. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!

The court previously heard Muhamadi was taken into the care of social services in Bradford after entering the UK as an unaccompanied asylum seeker.

He had made a claim for asylum in 2021 at the age of 16 and was granted leave to remain in the UK in 2022, to be reviewed in 2027.

Following the men's trial, Border Security Minister Alex Norris described their offending as "nothing short of "monstrous".

"Sex offenders will be denied refugee protections, and we will seek to deport them as soon as possible," Norris said.

Grooming gang found guilty of exploiting teenage girls for sex

Matthew Richards,Caernarfon Crown Courtand

Miriam Barker,BBC

(Clockwise from top left) Mohamed Arshad, Ziaullah Badshah, Mustafa Iqbal, Sarah Gray, and Jaswinder Singh were found guilty of their roles in exploiting three girls

Four men and a woman have been found guilty of being part of a grooming gang that exploited teenage girls for sex.

Mustafa Iqbal, Mohamed Arshad, Ziaullah Badshah, Jaswinder Singh were convicted of conspiracy to traffic their victims, who were aged 14, 15 and 16.

At Caernarfon Crown Court on Monday, Iqbal, Arshad and Badshah were also found guilty of rape while another member of the gang, Sarah Gray, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice and assisting an offender.

The men were remanded in custody ahead of sentencing on 25 September, while Gray was released on bail.

Prosecutor Owen Edwards KC said the men had used the three girls - named only as Child A, B and C - like "sexual commodities".

"They took full sexual advantage of Girl B in particular," he said.

The jury was told Child A had been treated as a "sexual plaything", who finally had gone to the police after having been handcuffed by Iqbal and had been raped.

The court heard the teenagers were given drugs and sexually abused in cars, homes and businesses in Rhyl, Denbighshire and the surrounding area between April 2022 and March 2024.

The first two victims, Child B who was 15 and Child C who was 14, were approached by Iqbal, 43, near a petrol station in the town, and he persuaded them to come back to his home.

They were later joined by local coffee shop owner Arshad, 36, and his friend Badshah, 25.

During the trial the jury had been told how the two girls stated they were 17, had smoked cannabis with the men and had played a game of spin the bottle.

Badshah, who came to Rhyl as a refugee from Pakistan when he was 15, admitted kissing Child B and Child C, and on later occasions having sex with Child B at his home.

Badshah, of Brighton Road, Rhyl, was found guilty of two counts of rape, two counts of conspiracy to traffic, two counts of conspiracy to require a person to perform compulsory labour, supplying cannabis to another.

Arshad, 36, of Clifton Grove, Rhyl, was found guilty of three counts of rape, two counts of conspiracy to traffic, two counts of conspiracy to require a person to perform compulsory labour, and supplying cannabis to another.

The court heard one of the counts of rape happened in an alleyway outside his former business, Zayn's Coffee House.

Iqbal, of Trellewelyn Road, Rhyl, was found guilty of raping Child B and also sexually assaulting Child C. He was also found guilty of raping another teenager, Child A, who was 16 and lived in a care home.

Described as a drug dealer during the trial, he supplied Child A with crack cocaine and cannabis in return for sex.

Iqbal was convicted of 21 offences, including four of rape and three of sexual assault. He was also found guilty of conspiracy to traffic and conspiracy to supply cannabis and cocaine, breaching a trafficking risk order, and he pleaded guilty to possessing a prohibited weapon.

The gang was unmasked after another friend of the men took Child B to London.

Former builder Singh, 61, claimed the girl was looking after his dog and there was no sexual motive in taking her on the trip to see his family in the capital, but a concerned adult was alarmed by Singh's intentions and reported him to the police.

Singh, of River Street, Rhyl, was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to traffic and one count of supplying cannabis to another.

Gray, 53, of Llanasa Road, Gronant, was also found guilty of conspiracy to supply cocaine to another and conspiracy to supply cannabis to another.

After the guilty verdicts Det Ch Insp Richard Sidney said his thoughts were the three young victims.

"They were children, aged just 14 to 16, when they were subjected to exploitation and abuse by adults who took advantage of their vulnerabilities and sought to manipulate and control them for their own gain," he said.

"No child should have to experience what these young women endured."

He said that the five defendants had denied almost every allegation against them from the outset.

"I hope today's outcome sends a clear message that those who seek to groom and exploit vulnerable children will be relentlessly pursued," he said.

A spokesperson for Denbighshire council said its thoughts were with the young women at the centre of the case, adding that it wanted to "recognise the courage and bravery they have shown".

The spokesperson said the council would work with the North Wales Safeguarding Board on a review, separate to the criminal process, that would "examine agencies' involvement with the young people and to identify what lessons can be learnt for the future".

"We understand that this case has been challenging and has brought up strong feelings. We ask that everyone respects the legal process and each other as we process this outcome," they added.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, information and support can be found at the BBC's Action Line