The leader of the Rochdale child sex gang, Shabir Ahmed, faces an even longer jail term after launching a horrific attack on a fellow inmate at HMP Wakefield
The leader of Rochdale’s infamous child grooming gang stamped on the head of another inmate following a row about terrorism.
Shabir Ahmed is currently serving a 22-year jail sentence for a string of sex attacks on young girls, who he groomed and got them to call him ‘daddy’.
The 64-year-old got into an argument with another prisoner at HMP Wakefield on the day of the Brussels terror attacks last year.
Suicide bombers killed 32 and injured more than 300 in a series of attacks on the airport and a train station in the Belgium capital on March 22 last year.
Another prisoner, James Palmer, had suggested ‘terrorists should be eradicated’ on the day the attack, sparking violence from Ahmed.
Ahmed confronted him and threatened to kill him if he ‘slagged off Muslims again’, the court heard. He later punched Palmer to the face before stamping on his head ‘a number of times’, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Palmer was taken to the prison’s healthcare department where he spent a few days being treated for a ‘bust nose’, a cut lip and abrasions to his head, the court heard.
The attack took place at HMP Wakefield on the day of the Brussels terror attacks
Bombers at Brussels airport and a metro station killed 32 and injured more than 300 people
Speaking about his reaction to the terror attack, Palmer told the court: ‘I was shocked and horrified again. I said these bombers have got to be eradicated.
He said Ahmed then told him: ‘You effing insult Muslims again I will effing kill you.’
Ahmed denied the attack, but a jury found him guilty of assaulting occasioning actual bodily harm.
He now stands to have a consecutive sentence added to the end of his jail term.
Divorced father-of-four Ahmed was one of a gang of men convicted of preying on girls in Rochdale, plying them with drink and drugs before they were ‘passed around’ for sex.
The takeaway worker used his trial to launch a series of tirades, including one in which he tried to blame Western society for allowing young girls to ‘parade on the streets’.
He is one of four of the gang now fighting a taxpayer-funded battle against their deportation to Pakistan.
The four – who raped, abused and tormented young girls – claim booting them out of the country will harm their families.
The attack took place when inmates argued after seeing news coverage of the bombings