UK’s largest investigation into Grooming Jihad in Rotherham area leads to multiple convictions

This week, British courts have convicted eight people of raping and sexually abusing underage girls as part of Operation Stovewood, the UK’s largest investigation into underage sexual exploitation and grooming jihad cases in Rotherham. Notably, Operation Stovewood was launched against the backdrop of the groundbreaking Jay Report. In 2014, the Jay Report found that between 1997 and 2013, at least 1,400 girls were abused, trafficked and groomed by gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani origin, in the Rotherham area alone.

Under Operation Stoverwood, NCA officers have identified more than 1,100 victims and to date 37 people – including Waleed Ali – have been convicted. There are still more than 50 active investigations ongoing.

On Friday (13 September) Sheffield Crown Court found Waleed Ali (42) guilty of raping an underage girl in Rotherham 21 years ago, as a result of an Operation Stovewood investigation. The court immediately sentenced him to five years in prison.

At the time of the crime, the underage girl was 14 years old. For almost two decades, she suffered in silence and had not previously reported the crime. However, in 2021, she approached the police who were investigating multiple cases of sexual abuse, rape and Grooming Jihad in the Rotherham area.

After identifying and speaking to a woman they believed had been sexually abused as a child, officers from Operation Stovewood launched their investigation. The rape victim recounted her ordeal to specially trained NCA officers.

Waleed Ali, in his early 20s, targeted the victim after seeing her sitting alone at a water fountain in Rotherham town centre. He and his gang approached the girl and asked her to come with him to a nearby alleyway.

But when she repeatedly refused to comply, Ali abused her. Intimidated by Ali and his gang, the girl went into the dark alley. The accused took the victim away from public view where Ali raped her.

After launching their investigation in September 2021, NCA officers arrested and questioned Ali. Initially, Ali not only denied the charges but also told officers that their questioning made him feel “sick”. However, Waleed Ali was revealed to be a serial rapist, having previously been convicted of raping and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in the same alleyway in early 2003, in a case investigated by South Yorkshire Police.

Sheffield Crown Court also sentenced seven men convicted of abusing underage girls as part of Operation Stovewood on Thursday and Friday. The seven men convicted are Mohammed Amar (43), Mohammed Siyab (44), Yasser Ajaibe (39), Mohammed Zameer Sadiq (50), Abid Saddiq (43), Tahir Yasin (38) and Ramin Bari (38).

According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), the child victims were aged 11 and 15 when the offence took place and both had to spend time in child care during the period they committed the offence.

CPS lawyer Zoe Becker said the seven convicts “deliberately exploited two young girls who they knew were vulnerable and used drugs and alcohol to exploit them for their own sexual gratification”.

According to the court, the crimes were committed between April 2003 and April 2008. The court found that the convicts regularly picked up the victims – often from the children’s homes where they lived – in their cars. They gave them cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis and money and then attacked them, forced them to perform sexual acts or raped them.

Stuart Cobb, chief investigator at the NCA, said: “They were responsible for some of the worst crimes we investigated under Operation Stovewood.”

The court found that Amar, Ajaibe, Sadiq and Sayib abused one underage girl, while Yassin and Bari targeted the other. Saddiq, who was already serving a 20-year prison sentence for sexual offences before this hearing, abused both girls, the court found.

It also emerged that the attacks took place in various locations around Rotherham, including a park, a car in a supermarket car park, a cemetery and behind a nursery.

The NCA’s Operation Stovewood remains the largest investigation of its kind into rape, sexual abuse and Grooming Jihad in the Rotherham area between 1997 and 2013. However, the scourge of Grooming Jihad is widespread across the UK.

The Plague of Grooming Jihad in the UK

Grooming jihad has become a threat in the UK. Over the decades, many loopholes in the law and a lack of political will have allowed perpetrators to escape punishment, including the fear of authorities being labelled racists, as most of these crimes are committed by Pakistani men. Grooming jihad is happening on a much larger and more terrifying scale, targeting teenagers, particularly underage girls.

Earlier in May 2024, more than two dozen men were jailed after eight young girls in West Yorkshire were raped, abused and trafficked across the UK over 13 years. The years-long abuse in Kirklees, described as “utterly appalling”, resulted in a total of 346 years in prison for the 24 sex offenders.

In addition to Operation Stovewood, Operation Tourway, a multi-year investigation into the sexual exploitation of young girls in North Kirklees, which includes the towns of Dewsbury and Batley, focused on incidents that occurred between 1999 and 2012.

Sexual abuse scandals were uncovered in a range of locations, including Huddersfield, Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, Bristol, Peterborough and Newcastle. It is estimated that almost 19,000 adolescents in England were sexually abused in 2018-19, according to government figures. Local authorities in England identified around 18,700 potential victims in the year, compared to 3,300 five years earlier.

According to a report by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), there has been an 82% increase in online grooming offences against young people over the past five years. Furthermore, research conducted by the charity Sikh Mediation and Rehabilitation Team revealed that Pakistani men have been raping and abusing Sikh girls in the UK for years.