A rapist who masqueraded as a devout Muslim was blasted as a hypocrite by a judge as he was jailed for 16 years for attacks on schoolgirls.

Mohammed Shaheen, of Harrow Street, Crumpsall, held himself out as a faithful believer who had been framed by his two victims.

But a Manchester Crown Court jury rejected his pleas of innocence and found him guilty of seven sex charges, including specimen charges reflecting multiple incidents of rape.

Jobbing decorator Shaheen, a 43-year-old father-of-seven, raped and groped the underage teenagers in Longsight and Crumpsall and then ordered them to keep silent.

One of the victims was told that if she spoke of what he had done he would kill himself.

He also told her he had an indecent recording of her that he would distribute if she reported him.

However Shaheen’s abuse of the pair came to light in 2014, after the older of the girls finally found the courage to confide in a schoolfriend. By that stage Shaheen had tried to force her into a degrading sex act.

In video interviews taken after his behaviour came to light, the girls were ‘hesitant, anxious, and plainly vulnerable’, Judge Martin Steiger QC said in Shaheen’s sentencing hearing.

But since speaking of their ordeal to police ‘there has been a considerable development in their self-confidence’, the judge said.

Shaheen has no previous convictions, but the court heard evidence there had been accusations of similar offending when he was living in Pakistan.

Adam Watkins, defending, said Shaheen’s relatives were in Holland and Pakistan, so he was not expecting any prison visits.

“Prison will be a particularly isolating experience for him”, Mr Watkins said.

Sending him down, Judge Martin Steiger QC said: “He masqueraded as religious when all along he was behaving in this hypocritical way. He said that if it got out he would kill himself with a knife.

"Most shockingly he appears to have made a secret recording of her naked, he threatened if she said anything he would show that to others, thereby traducing her reputation.

"He alleged these two young naive grls had invented this tale of sexual abuse and more shockingly still he pretended torn papers from condom packets had been planted by the girls themselves, when in reality it was compelling evidence of his guilt.

"A very substantial sentence indeed is called for, for these shocking offences.”