CRAIG CONDEMNED THE POLITICS OF HATE. WILL SHE DEMAND THE RETURN OF THE MAN ACCUSED OF RAPING AND TRAFFICKING GIRLS IN MANCHESTER’S CARE?

Two women say they were raped and trafficked as girls in the care of Manchester City Council. The man they named is sitting in a legislature in Mirpur. The new Mayor of Greater Manchester led that council for four and a half years and now holds the elected office responsible for holding Greater Manchester Police to account.

THE OFFICE SHE WON

Bev Craig was declared Mayor of Greater Manchester late on Friday 31 July, after the largest by-election ever held in this country. She took office on 3 August.

She won 309,525 votes to Reform UK's 157,178 on the second count. Turnout was 25.1 per cent, the lowest in the history of the office. In Oldham it was 21.5, the lowest in Greater Manchester. She took 47.1 per cent of first preferences, which is a little under one in eight of the people entitled to vote.

The mayoralty carries Greater Manchester's police and crime functions. That is why Andy Burnham had to give up the office when he won a parliamentary seat, and it is why those functions now sit with her. She appoints the Chief Constable, sets the policing budget and agrees the strategic priorities.

Before this she led Manchester City Council from December 2021 until the day she won.

THE SPEECH

Her victory speech is published in full. It runs to around eight hundred words.

It covers Peterloo, the suffragettes, splitting the atom and the invention of modern computing. Free buses for eleven to eighteen year olds. Five hundred pounds in the pockets of families. Good quality homes people can afford. Good jobs in every corner of the city region. Pride restored to high streets and town centres. Defending the city region with every bone in her body.

It does not mention the police. It does not mention crime. It does not mention victims. It does not mention children's services or safeguarding. And it most definitely does not mention little White girls gang raped by Pakistani men. She had just been elected to an office that carries Greater Manchester's police and crime functions.

THEY WERE CHILDREN IN HER COUNCIL'S CARE

Chaudhry Rukhsar Ahmed was arrested at Manchester Airport on 18 July 2024 on suspicion of rape and of trafficking children in care. Two women told Greater Manchester Police that he raped and trafficked them when they were young girls in Rusholme in the early 1990s. They were in the care of the local authority. That authority is Manchester City Council.

Last month he was due at a Manchester police station to answer bail. He did not arrive. Too unwell to fly, the force was told. In the same weeks he was photographed campaigning in Mirpur, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and on polling day he took the LA-4 seat with 22,376 votes.

There is no general extradition treaty between the United Kingdom and Pakistan.

NOT ONE OF THOSE DECISIONS WAS HERS

The attempt to restrict his travel was made by Greater Manchester Police. The refusal was the judge's. Every decision to keep Chaudhry Rukhsar Ahmed on pre-charge bail across the two years that followed was taken before Bev Craig held the police and crime functions.

She has nothing to defend and no position to protect. That is precisely why she can act, and why doing nothing would be a choice made in the open.

THIS CITY HAS BEEN HERE BEFORE

Operation Augusta was Greater Manchester Police's investigation into the sexual exploitation of children in care in south Manchester. The independent review found it identified at least 57 children as potential victims and around 97 potential persons of interest, and that it was closed down before all lines of enquiry had been completed or exhausted.

Operation Edison was launched in January 2020, after a survivor disclosed abuse in south Manchester. The force describes it as an investigation into non-recent child sexual exploitation in Rusholme during the 1990s. By January this year it had reached 22 arrests.

Baroness Longfield's inquiry has named its first local investigations. Oldham. Bradford and Keighley. London. Manchester is not among them.

Paragraph 5.5 of the terms of reference requires the inquiry to examine issues arising between 1 January 1996 and 31 March 2029, and provides that information received outside those dates may still be considered. May, not must. Paragraph 4.6.1 requires the chair and panel to set out the historic time period each local investigation will focus on, in line with the evidence they receive.

The decade these women are describing sits before the window opens.

THREE THINGS CRAIG CAN DO THIS WEEK

Ask the Chief Constable, publicly and on the record, on how many occasions after 18 July 2024 Chaudhry Rukhsar Ahmed was re-bailed, and on how many of those occasions the question of restricting his travel or surrendering his passport was reconsidered. Paragraph 15.8 of the statutory guidance states that conditions imposed when a suspect is re-bailed are not constrained by any earlier conditions. Whether the question was ever revisited is a matter of record, and the force holds that record.

Write to Baroness Longfield and demand that the City of Manchester is named as a local investigation. Augusta and Edison are the argument. She should also ask Longfield to set Manchester's historic period so that allegations from the early 1990s are not excluded, using the discretion paragraph 4.6.1 gives the chair and panel and the express provision in paragraph 5.5 for evidence from outside the formal dates.

And ask the Chief Constable to write to the Home Secretary. There is no general extradition treaty between the United Kingdom and Pakistan, and section 194 of the Extradition Act 2003 allows the Secretary of State to make special arrangements in a single case. Shabana Mahmood cannot begin that process on her own. Somebody has to ask her. Six weeks was the window the force gave itself when it said Ahmed was expected to answer bail, and the Mayor is entitled to know what happens at the end of it.

Three letters. None of them asks her to interfere in an operational investigation, and none of them is outside her office.

SHE TALKED ABOUT HATE BUT SHE DID NOT TALK ABOUT THE CHILDREN GANG RAPED BECAUSE THEY WERE HATED.

Twice in that speech she reached for hate. She praised the people of this city region for rejecting the politics of hate and standing for their neighbours. She said we have to move away from divisive politics that tries to pit neighbour against neighbour.

She also set herself a test. Every single decision she takes as Mayor will pass the test of making your life better. Her words, on the night she took the office.

Two girls were placed in the care of the council she went on to lead. They say they were raped and trafficked in Rusholme. They waited three decades before they went to the police, and the man they named has not been charged, has stopped answering bail, and is sitting in a legislative assembly in Mirpur.

Nobody has written a letter for them.

Every single decision Craig takes as Mayor will pass the test of making your life better. That was the promise she made on the night she took the office, to three million people. Two of them were girls in Rusholme. Taken from care homes that her council ran. Taken away to be raped and trafficked by Pakistani men.

Bev Craig told us that we have to move away from divisive politics that pits neighbour against neighbour. Well I have a message for our new mayor. Nothing divides a city like two girls in its care being raped and nobody being made to answer for it.

WE ARE AT WAR WITH OUR GOVERNMENT

What comes next has never been more straightforward. Our journey to hold to account those who covered up the industrial scale gang rape of little White girls by bloc vote supplying clans of Pakistani men now leads all the way to Number 10.

Our fight is with the Prime Minister himself.

Whether we succeed or fail will not be decided by Andy Burnham or any other Labour politician. It will not be decided by a legacy media complicit in the cover up, nor by the police officers and council officials who were partners in the rape and trafficking of children. Our quest for justice rests with none of them. It rests with us.

I am in no doubt about the challenge we now face, or the scale of the hostility in the days ahead. It makes no difference. There is no coming back for any of us if we turn away and abandon our nation's children to this ongoing horror.

My ask of those of you who read, share and support my work is simple.

1. Subscribe to my pages on Facebook, X and Youtube. Like and share the posts. Comment if you want to.
2. And please, for the million plus that have read content on this page over the last month alone, please sign up to my newsletter, Red Wall and the Rabble. Free if you must, paid if you can. Here is the link;

3. Believe. Not just in me but in yourselves. We are more powerful than we have ever imagined. Look how far we have come despite everything they have done to us.

Without you, they win and the cover up will be complete. It is up to us to stop them. It is up to us to protect our children and force a reckoning of a kind long overdue.

Raja Miah MBE