A Somali rapist whose deportation was dramatically halted after a mutiny by passengers on his plane is finally being kicked out of Britain.

Yaqub Ahmed, 30, should have been deported last October but the protesters halted his removal, and he was then controversially released back on to the streets in March after being given bail.

Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that he was recently taken back into custody and is being held at a detention centre, from where he will be taken to an airport and returned to Somalia.

Yaqub Ahmed, 30, should have been deported last October but the protesters halted his removal, and he was then controversially released back on to the streets in March after being given bail

Ahmed was convicted with three other men and jailed for nine years for the sickening gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in 2007. Now, 12 years later, sources have told this newspaper that a deportation order will be carried out ‘in the not too distant future’.

It is understood he is being held at either Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre close to Heathrow Airport, or at the Yarl’s Wood centre near Bedford, from where he would be taken to Stansted.

The Government is expected to pay for a costly charter flight to prevent a repetition of last year’s failed attempt when passengers – unaware of Ahmed’s appalling crime – took pity on him and intervened before their aircraft left Heathrow for Turkey.

Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that he was recently taken back into custody and is being held at a detention centre, from where he will be taken to an airport and returned to Somalia

In a video of the incident, Ahmed is heard screaming as holidaymakers shout: ‘Take him off the plane!’ The four-strong Home Office team accompanying Ahmed were forced to abandon the deportation and take him off the aircraft.

A time-consuming review of what went wrong and a new safety assessment are believed to have contributed to the eight-month delay before officials decided to launch a fresh deportation attempt.

In April, Ahmed’s victim told the MoS of her anger that he remained in the UK.

Despite the severity of his offence, he was fitted with an electronic tag and released on bail after an immigration tribunal hearing on March 14.

The Government is expected to pay for a costly charter flight to prevent a repetition of last year’s failed attempt when passengers – unaware of Ahmed’s appalling crime – took pity on him and intervened before their aircraft left Heathrow for Turkey

Ahmed was convicted with three other men and jailed for nine years for the sickening gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in 2007

Last night, the victim’s mother said she hoped the deportation would allow her daughter to feel safer and give her ‘some form of justice’. She said: ‘It’s been never-ending. That’s my child’s life – her childhood – that has been taken away.’ She also called for ‘each and every one’ of the passengers who intervened to apologise.

‘Why did they feel the need to intervene in something which clearly was nothing to do with them? They actually made it possible for my daughter’s rapist to be allowed back into the country by their actions,’ she said.

Ondogo Ahmed, was one of one of Yaqub's accomplices. He disappeared from the UK and died while fighting for ISIS in 2013

Sources say that Adnan Mohamud, one of Ahmed’s co-defendants, who was also born in Somalia and granted refugee status in Britain in 2002, is being held in a removal centre and is on the verge of being booted out of Britain.

And Home Office officials are exploring whether to strip another of the rapists – Somali-born Adnan Barud – of his British citizenship so he too can be deported.

The fourth member of the gang, Ondogo Ahmed, who was jailed for eight years for conspiracy to rape, sneaked out of Britain to join Islamic State in Syria after his release, despite still being on licence. He is believed to have been killed while fighting there.

Last night, a senior immigration lawyer expressed surprise that Ahmed was granted bail in March and suggested his detention indicated that his deportation was ‘imminent’, adding: ‘It’s quite difficult to get somebody on bail when they are facing deportation. A judge can only order the release of somebody on bail if removal wasn’t imminent.

‘The fact that they have detained him again tells me that deportation is probably imminent.’

The Home Office said: ‘We are determined to protect the public by removing foreign nationals who commit criminal offences.’