As rapist Yaqub Ahmed was handed yet another set of deportation papers by an immigration officer, he could barely conceal his contempt: ‘I have been planning,’ he boasted. ‘I’m two steps ahead.’
The reason for this arrogant swagger? He had cooked up what he believed to be a cunning ruse that would get the Home Office off his back once and for all.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal today how, from his cell in Harmondsworth detention centre in West London, Ahmed had arranged for his associates to film a video in which they would pose as Islamic State terrorists threatening to kill him if the British Government dared to send him back to Somalia.
Dressed in military fatigues in the bright sunshine of what appears to be an African desert, one of two masked men is recorded reading the fake death threat from a torn script.
‘Lately, we heard from the media in the UK that they are bringing back a bad man called Yaqub Ahmed,’ the man says. ‘If any of those people are returned to East Africa we will target them and kill them.’
This video mysteriously appeared on Facebook just five days before Ahmed was due to be deported from the UK.
Dressed in military fatigues in the bright sunshine of what appears to be an African desert, one of two masked men is recorded reading the fake death
Yaqub Ahmed was one of a gang of rapists now behind bars. Ahmed’s cynical attempt to dupe officials and the courts is revealed in court papers seen by the MoS
Several days later, his lawyers mounted a fresh bid to block his deportation using the film as the central plank of their case.
Ahmed’s cynical attempt to dupe officials and the courts is revealed in court papers seen by the MoS. Incredibly, the fake video delayed his deportation by yet another three years.
This extraordinary chapter in the saga began in October 2020 – almost exactly two years after Ahmed’s deportation to Somalia was dramatically halted by a mutiny of plane passengers at Heathrow.
He was once again facing removal after losing a judicial review in which he claimed that deporting him to Somalia would breach his human rights because he would be at risk of taking his own life.
A week before his planned removal, an immigration officer served Ahmed with his deportation papers, and the official’s detailed notes of their exchange were contained in court papers.
‘They think it’s the end but it’s not …the fight goes on,’ Ahmed spat. ‘All this time you guys have been coming to see me, I have been planning, I already knew this was coming, I’m two steps ahead. I will challenge this through the courts.’
How exactly Ahmed orchestrated his deception remains unclear but the judges said he has an ‘extensive worldwide network of family support’. Pictured, passengers help get Ahmed kicked off a plane as he resists being deportation
On November 2, his legal team filed a fresh case based on the video, which they said three Somali news websites had reported on.
With Ahmed’s taxpayer-funded lawyers, Wilson Solicitors, claiming it put their client ‘at real risk of being killed and/or facing inhuman and degrading treatment if removed’, his deportation had yet again been spectacularly derailed.
The Home Office immediately suspected the video was not what it claimed to be and asked Metropolitan Police experts to investigate.
They soon pinpointed a series of glaring flaws, including the fact it was of much poorer quality than those usually associated with Islamic State’s vile propaganda unit.
Nor did it display any of the terror group’s usual graphics and while it mainly features two men in military clothing, a third man, wearing civilian clothes, twice accidentally strays into the shot.
In a damning judgment, three judges rejected the appeal in March 2022, and ruled Ahmed had organised for a fake video to be planted online to scupper his deportation.
They said Ahmed’s past behaviour, including his refusal to accept his 2008 rape conviction, ‘indicates dishonesty and a willingness to mislead’, adding: ‘We are left in no doubt that the video was a fabrication, manufactured at the behest of the appellant for the explicit purpose of creating a fresh claim to stay in the UK.’
His lawyers tried to gag the MoS and fought to keep THEIR names secret
Ronan Toal, pictured, lost an ‘unprecedented’ application for anonymity along with Ahmed’s other baristers
The Mail on Sunday has scored a huge victory for press freedom after Yaqub Ahmed’s lawyers tried to keep their names secret.
Three of his barristers – Ronan Toal, Ubah Dirie and Stephanie Harrison – lost an ‘unprecedented’ application for anonymity that would have stopped the media from identifying them for a year.
The lawyers, who represented Ahmed for some of his proceedings, criticised this newspaper’s reporting of the case and said they feared they were at risk of violence or being abused.
Lawyers, they argued, should be able to perform their jobs ‘without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference’.
Opposing the application on behalf of The Mail on Sunday, barrister Jude Bunting KC warned it would create a precedent in which other lawyers representing controversial clients would also seek anonymity.
He said that even in his native Northern Ireland ‘where lawyers have been killed for being lawyers’ none ever sought anonymity, even at the height of The Troubles.
The application was dismissed by two upper tribunal judges in December, who said it would be a ‘disproportionate interference’ on this newspaper’s right to expression and be a ‘restraint on the press’.
Dawn Alford, of the Society of Editors, last night welcomed the MoS’s victory, saying: ‘Were it not for the vehement stance by the media, a further veil of secrecy could have been added to this case with huge ramifications.’
A separate draconian court order giving Ahmed anonymity was finally lifted this month after Sarah Palin, representing the MoS, successfully argued that the rights of his victim and of the media outweighed Ahmed’s right to privacy.
Their extraordinary judgment revealed the video was not the only evidence of fakery.
Police experts also found all three supposed news articles about Ahmed’s deportation posted on the Somali websites were identical and wrongly reported that Ahmed was ‘accused’ – not convicted – of rape and that his alleged victim was a woman, instead of a teenage girl.
The judges said these errors were all ‘overwhelmingly favourable’ to Ahmed.
It was clear that even when planting fake material online, Ahmed refused to accept responsibility for his depraved crime.
How exactly Ahmed orchestrated his deception remains unclear but the judges said he has an ‘extensive worldwide network of family support’.
But astonishingly, the tribunal’s excoriating judgment was still not the end of the story.
Ahmed appealed again but last December that was thrown out by the upper tier immigration tribunal, and eight months later – on August 1 – Ahmed was finally deported.