Shabir Ahmed, the man at the heart of the conspiracy carried on a secret affair with the white teenager who acted as his recruiter.

For a year he lived in fear that people in his own community might find out about the relationship and ostracise him.

On every occasion the couple had sex he would “go home, say two units of prayer and ask Allah forgiveness for doing wrong”.

He told the jury that fellow Pakistanis would regard him as having “infested” their community by sleeping with a white girl. “It’s not just them who are racist. We are racist too”.

Ahmed, who could not be named during the original trial, cut a belligerent figure in the courtroom, hurling insults at the judge and prosecution barristers and claiming he was the victim of a police-led conspiracy.

He dismissed the allegations against him as “white lies” made up by girls who had built up a profitable business empire by working as prostitutes.

“They were clever girls,” he told the jury. “If they’d gone on Lord Sugar’s Apprentice programme they would have won.

“They knew more Pakistanis than I as a Pakistani know. They knew what they were doing. They were earning good money”.