A gang rape victim has described the moment holidaymakers on a Heathrow plane stopped her attacker from being deported.

The mother, 27, has grappled with PTSD since she was raped by four men at the age of 16, and is now terrified to go out in public after watching her attacker walk free over a decade later.

One of them, Yaqub Ahmed, a refugee from Somalia, was due to be deported last October, before passengers on a flight to Turkey intervened unaware of his crime.

Yaqub Ahmed was due to be deported but was taken off a flight to Turkey after passengers intervened

Footage of Ahmed, 29, which was shared widely across social media, showed travellers demanding his release and shouting ‘they’re separating him from his family’.




When four Home Office officials escorted Ahmed off the plane, one said: ‘You’re free man!’

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Hannah – not her real name – told the Mail on Sunday her life has been ruined since she was attacked by the men in a north London flat in 2007.

She told the paper: ‘How could you defend a rapist? How could you intervene? He was in handcuffs, he was being taken out of the country… who are you people to interfere with justice?

‘Fair enough you didn’t know the situation, but now I hope you feel proud of yourselves because you stopped something that I have waited for for so long: something that made me feel that little bit safer.’

The then teenager was attacked by the men after becoming separated from friends – who had Hannah’s phone and bus pass – on a night out in Leicester Square.

Adnan Mohamud approached her claiming her friend had gone back to his Crouch End flat with one of his friends.

But when she arrived, her friend wasn’t there.

Ondogo Ahmed was given an eight-year prison term but is believed to have died having fled to Syria to fight for the Islamic State

She said: ‘They said she had gone to the shop and that she was coming back. They did what they did. They held me down. They took turns.’

Eventually she managed to run free, before a neighbour heard her scream and called the police who arrested the men at the scene.

Ahmed, then 19 and living in Clerkenwell, North London; Adnan Mohamud, 19, who lived in the flat where the rape took place; and Adnan Barud, 21, from Holloway, North London, were each jailed for nine years for planning and carrying out the rape.

The Home Office is believed to still have plans to deport Ahmed but he has appealed the decision again (Picture: Yui Mok/PA)

A fourth man, Ondogo Ahmed, 19, also of Holloway, received eight years for conspiracy to rape. He is believed to have died after fleeing to Syria to fight for the Islamic State group in 2013.

Mohamud and Barud have since been released from prison.

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Ahmed has been in an Immigration Removal Centre for the last five months, which is believed to have so far cost taxpayers more than £18,000.

His failed deportation has seen Hannah struggle so severely with anxiety – fearing she will see her attackers – she has been unable to work since November and has left London.

Hannah didn’t know Ahmed was still in the country until she spotted her attacked in the video and said she should’ve been warned ‘so I didn’t have to find out in the way that I did’.



Home Office sources say the Government is planning to deport Ahmed, but he appears to have launched another appeal, according to the Mail on Sunday.

He was due to appear before an immigration tribunal in Nottingham on March 14 but it is believed the Home Office and the tribunal last week did not reveal the outcome of the hearing.

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We are determined to protect the public by removing foreign national offenders who commit criminal offences.

‘We are committed to ensuring that the victims of foreign national offenders receive the information they are entitled to should they request it.’

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