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” 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.