Yaqub Ahmed was convicted of gang rape. He was filmed complaining as officials and police attempted to deport him

An airline passenger whose deportation was halted after protests by holidaymakers was revealed to be a convicted gang rapist yesterday.

Yaqub Ahmed was on a flight waiting to take off from Heathrow to Istanbul last week when fellow sympathetic passengers intervened, in the latest action by the public to halt deportations.

He was being expelled after having been convicted of being part of a gang of four men who raped a 16-year-old stranger who had become separated from her friends during a night out in London’s Leicester Square.

All four, aged 18 to 20, were caught after neighbours heard the girl’s screams at a flat in Crouch End, north London, in August 2007 and were convicted despite pleading not guilty.

Ahmed, then 18 and living