RHYL IS THE RAPE GANG INQUIRY WALES DOES NOT WANT

North Wales Police arrested the men in 2022 and released them twice. Social services knew the girls. One offender was already under a trafficking risk order. Now, after every safeguard failed, Wales still has no statutory inquiry into what happened.

NORTH WALES POLICE HAD FOUR CHANCES TO STOP MUSTAFA IQBAL AND HANDED HIM BACK TO THE CHILDREN EVERY TIME

North Wales Police arrested Mustafa Iqbal, Mohamed Usman Arshad, Ziaullah Badshah and Jaswinder Singh in 2022 for what they were doing to two girls in Rhyl and sent all four home. One of those girls asked the force to look again and in 2023 it cleared Iqbal a second time. By then he had found a third girl, sixteen years old, and the force arrested him for that in January 2024, bailed him, and told him not to go near her. He handcuffed her and raped her.

In December 2024 the force went to a magistrate for an order banning him from contact with any child, and in the months before his final arrest in August 2025 he was texting a fourth child asking whether her mother was in. Four chances to stop this man, and after each one he went back to children.

When they arrested him in 2022 he had convictions for indecent assault, violence and extreme pornography. He delivered takeaways and drugs on an e-scooter and used both to find children. It was not the girls who went to the police. A friend of one of them did, because she was frightened for her. The force had the complaint, the man, his record and his phone. The girl herself, under his control, lied for him. Rotherham taught British policing that a child under the control of the men raping her will lie for them, and that letting the men go on her word is exactly how Rotherham happened. North Wales Police let them go on her word.

A year later that girl came forward herself. She used her right to review as the victim and told the force in writing that it had got 2022 wrong. The force looked at that file again, the man with the indecent assault conviction, the phone, and the child it had not believed the first time now asking it to look, and came back with the same answer. Evidential issues.

Twice is not a mistake. A police force decided twice that two girls in Rhyl were not worth prosecuting for.

The judge said he was not criticising North Wales Police. I am. A friend told it in 2022. The victim told it in 2023, in writing. It ignored them both, and North Wales Police is responsible for every rape after that.

THE EVIDENCE SAT IN A POLICE EVIDENCE STORE FOR TWO YEARS WHILE THE GIRLS WERE PASSED AROUND

The phones North Wales Police seized in 2022 and never opened held the case. The men called the girls "gushti", the Urdu word for prostitutes.

Iqbal complained to Arshad that a girl had been "given" to the "next man" and sulked at him, "thought you was my mate". Arshad asked "is Thursday ok" and Iqbal replied he "could of come here and shagged her". That is two men arranging a day to rape a child, over text messages, on a phone that sat in a police station for two years while the child was being raped.

When the force finally read its own evidence, a jury convicted all five unanimously.

• Iqbal was jailed for 30 years and five on licence
• Arshad, who ran the family café round the corner from Rhyl police station, got 19
• Badshah, who came to Rhyl at fifteen and was twenty-five when he was sentenced, got 17
• Singh, who drove the girls around and took one of them to London, was given eight
• Sarah Gray, who let Iqbal use her house in Gronant and washed the bedding afterwards, the same

Nobody has been charged as the next man. No one know how many other men there were. I have said this for years about town after town in England and I will say it about Rhyl. The state jails the handful of men who run the children and never touches the men the children are sold to. Iqbal's own phone names a customer. North Wales Police has not said who he is or what it did with the evidence about him.

EVERYONE WHO WAS PAID TO PROTECT THESE GIRLS HAD THEIR FILE OPEN ON THE DESK

All three girls were known to social services. One was in care. These children did not slip through. The state had them, with case workers and files, and the men found them anyway because the state was complicit. Iqbal was under investigation, then on bail, then under a trafficking risk order, and he carried on through all of it. Singh told the girl he took to London to say she was his 22-year-old carer so nobody would think he was part of an "Asian grooming gang".

The rapists knew what they were. North Wales Police and the Welsh Government said they did not. I know what I think.

This began in April 2022. Four years ago is not historical. The Jay report was already eight years old. Every safeguarding lead in Denbighshire had a decade of guidance on their desk telling them what this looks like. Wales cannot say it did not understand. It understood and it did nothing.

AN ASSISTANT CHIEF CONSTABLE TOLD CARDIFF WELSH CASES WERE NOT ORGANISED AS SEEN ELSEWHERE WHILE HIS OWN FORCE WAS INVESTIGATING AN ORGANISED RING IN RHYL

In January 2025 a police liaison official spoke to an assistant chief constable of North Wales Police on the Welsh Government's behalf to ask whether Wales had organised child rape. The email recording that conversation, dragged out under freedom of information by BBC Wales, has him telling the Welsh Government that Welsh cases had "not been organised in nature as seen elsewhere".

At that moment his force had arrested the Rhyl men in 2022, refused the victim's review in 2023, arrested Iqbal again in January 2024, obtained a trafficking order against him in December 2024, and was investigating a ring that a jury would convict of trafficking and forced labour. That is organised. It was on his force's books when he said Wales did not have it.

He knew. A chief officer is asked by government whether his force has organised child rape because he is the man who is supposed to know, and Embank and Zirconium were his force's operations. Either he did not look at his own live investigations before answering the Welsh Government, or he looked and said it anyway.

North Wales Police has not named him, or the officer who cleared Iqbal in 2022, or the one who cleared him again in 2023. It has referred itself to the North Wales Safeguarding Board, announced it will say nothing until the report is out, and the board has told us the review is not part of the criminal process and exists to learn lessons.

It has none of the powers a statutory inquiry has to make a witness attend, answer under oath or hand over a document.

That is the scrutiny North Wales Police has chosen for itself, and it has chosen it because it is the one process that cannot make the assistant chief constable answer for January 2025.

ELUNED MORGAN REFUSED TO LOOK, AND RHUN AP IORWERTH HAS REFUSED AGAIN NINE DAYS BEFORE THE SENTENCING

Darren Millar asked Eluned Morgan for a Welsh inquiry in January 2025. She refused, hiding behind the four Welsh forces, which had told her there was "no clear evidence" of organised gangs in Wales while one of them had the Rhyl men on file. The Senedd voted it down 34 to 13 in February 2025, Morgan did not vote, and the Speaker repeatedly interrupted Millar for describing what had been done to a Welsh child. He was being disrespectful to the victim, she said. The Rhyl men were walking around Rhyl at the time.

Rhun ap Iorwerth took over in May 2026 with 43 Plaid seats out of 96 and the same refusal. On 16 September 2026 the Senedd voted on a Conservative amendment calling on the Welsh Government to commission a Wales-wide inquiry into the devolved bodies that hold the Rhyl files. Plaid killed it 47 to 37 and replaced it with an amendment noting that Wales sits inside Longfield's inquiry.

Plaid also pointing at the Welsh Government's child sexual abuse strategy for 2026 to 2036. This strategy was published in March 2026 by the same government that had the Rhyl girls' files open while they were raped. Ap Iorwerth was offered an inquiry into those bodies nine days before the Rhyl sentencing and answered with a document those bodies wrote about themselves.

Labour and Plaid gave the same answer through two First Ministers, because an inquiry into Welsh institutions is an inquiry into the Welsh Government and neither of them wants that.

LONGFIELD HAS FOUND ROOM FOR LONDON AND NOT ONE WELSH TOWN

Baroness Longfield's inquiry covers England and Wales. On 24 June 2026 she named Oldham, Bradford and Keighley, and London as her first local investigations. In the same year Welsh courts jailed Azad Ahmed and Wasee Shikel in Cardiff for sixteen years each and the Rhyl five for more than eighty years between them. A Welsh court has heard that a Welsh force dropped a child rape ring twice.

Longfield has not said a word about an inquiry into Rhyl.

The girls in Rhyl were fourteen, fifteen and sixteen. One was in care, one was a crack addict at sixteen who went to Iqbal for drugs and was raped for it, and the other two were picked up off the street stoned.

These are the same children the state abandoned in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and Oldham. They were poor, in care or one step from it, using, and written into a file as trouble. Wales has refused them three times. Morgan and ap Iorwerth both told them to wait, and the Speaker would not let a man describe what was done to one of them.

Longfield's inquiry exists to find out why the state looks away from exactly these children, and it has not chosen a Welsh town.

If a case where the police failed four times, social services had every file, a court order was ignored and a chief officer told government there was nothing to see does not qualify for a local investigation, Longfield must tell Wales what does.

REFORM ASKED WESTMINSTER TO DO CARDIFF'S JOB, AND IN CALDERDALE AND KIRKLEES IT DID NOT EVEN ASK

Reform is now the official opposition in Wales with 34 seats. On 16 September 2026 it tabled the motion that started the vote above. Read what Reform asked for.

It called on the UK Government to make sure Wales is investigated in the national inquiry. It asked nothing of the Welsh Government. It took the Conservatives, with seven seats, to amend it into a demand for a Welsh inquiry into the Welsh bodies that failed these girls. Reform asked London to act and the Conservatives asked Cardiff. Neither succeeded.

Helen Jenner has led Reform in Wales since 15 September 2026. At her first First Minister's Questions she cited Cardiff and Rhyl and asked ap Iorwerth whether he could look her in the eye and say he had not let victims down. Her own party's motion the week before had not asked for a Welsh inquiry.

I have watched what Reform does with power, so I do not take its questions on trust. In May 2026 Reform won Calderdale outright and became the largest group in Bradford and Kirklees. Five councillors can call an extraordinary meeting and put a council's demand for inclusion on the record.

1. In Bradford, the Conservatives forced the meeting that force Bradford on the list.
2. In Kirklees, Reform's leader stood up at the annual meeting on 20 May and admitted she did not understand the council's standing orders, and Reform called nothing.
3. In Calderdale, with an outright majority that needed nobody's permission, Reform did the same.

Neither Kirklees or Calderdale is on Longfield's list despite what was done there. Reform was elected in both on a promise to end the cover-up and did not use the power it won to force Longfield to act.

Reform Wales has 34 members and the opposition's time and has used it once, to ask London to act, when the failures in Rhyl belong to a Welsh police force, Welsh social services and a Welsh Government.

Jenner can put the Conservative demand down in Reform's name and make all 96 members vote on a Welsh statutory inquiry into Welsh institutions. If she does it I will applaud her. If she does not, Reform in Wales will have done exactly what Reform did in West Yorkshire, which is ask somebody else to hold the inquiry and do nothing itself.

REFORM HAS THE VOTES TO FORCE ALL OF THIS AND HELEN JENNER MUST USE THEM

North Wales Police will not name its own officers, the Welsh Government will not hold an inquiry into itself, and Longfield has not chosen Wales. The Conservatives, with seven seats, have already put a Welsh inquiry to a vote. Reform has 34 seats and the official opposition's time, and there are three things Helen Jenner must do with them.

1. She must write to the Chief Constable of North Wales Police and the Police and Crime Commissioner demanding the names of the officer who cleared Mustafa Iqbal in 2022, the officer who cleared him again in 2023, and the assistant chief constable who told Cardiff in January 2025 that Welsh cases were not organised, and publish the letters and whatever comes back.
2. She must write to Longfield as leader of Reform Wales demanding Rhyl be named as a local investigation, and publish that too, so Wales can read what the inquiry says to a town with a 30-year sentence and a force that let the rapist go twice.
3. She must put a Welsh statutory inquiry into Welsh institutions on the Senedd's order paper in Reform's name and make Plaid vote it down a second time in front of the country.

None of that needs anyone's permission. If Reform's 34 members cannot do three things after the Rhyl sentencing, then Reform in Wales has failed these girls the same way Reform in Calderdale and Kirklees failed theirs. It won on a promise to end the cover-up and then sat on its hands.

One of the girls told the court she is frightened to walk into Rhyl in case a relative of the men recognises her. The men are in prison. The officers who cleared them have not been named, the government that could compel their names has voted twice not to, and the inquiry that could put them under oath has not chosen Rhyl. She is the one who cannot go into her own town.

My name is Raja Miah MBE. For eight years I have exposed how politicians, police and public bodies failed working class White girls who were systematically raped by Pakistani grooming gangs. Together, with the support of the people of Oldham, we forced the Government to concede a National Statutory Inquiry after years of resistance.

Now the harder fight begins.

Andy Burnham is no longer the Mayor of Greater Manchester. He is the Prime Minister. That does not place him beyond scrutiny. If anything, it makes scrutiny more important than ever.

As Mayor, Burnham commissioned a series of Assurance Reviews across Greater Manchester, including one in my hometown of Oldham. They were presented as a search for the truth. They were nothing of the sort. They were cover ups of cover ups that allowed those responsible to escape proper accountability.

Don't take my word for it. Even former Greater Manchester Police detective Maggie Oliver has described what happened in Oldham as 'nothing short of a cover up'.

Despite every effort to stop us, we forced a National Inquiry. Now Burnham and others are attempting to rewrite the history of what happened under their watch.

At present, the inquiry has made no commitment to examine Burnham's own role or the decisions taken during his time as Mayor. That must change before the Oldham investigations begin.

The pressure to protect a serving Prime Minister will be immense. The institutions that failed these girls will have every incentive to avoid putting the country's most powerful politician under oath. Much of the media will once again find reasons to look the other way.

That is why this campaign cannot slow down now.

For too long this has been a one man operation. It needs to become something much bigger. We need the resources to build a genuinely independent investigative organisation with:

• A professional website capable of reaching far larger audiences.
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• The resources to investigate, travel and expose institutional failure wherever it is found.

Over the last 3 months we have secured over 1,000 paid supporters towards our target of 2,000. That is an incredible achievement. Every new supporter strengthens this campaign, increases our voice and makes it harder for those in power to ignore the evidence.

If you believe the truth should be followed wherever it leads, please stand with us.

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Should we succeed, politicians will go to prison. Even if there is only the smallest chance of this happening, isn't it worth your support?

Raja Miah MBE