Abdul Rauf, a father of five, was jailed for 17 months after CCTV footage revealed him hitting, kicking and pushing boys, some as young as nine, in his class at a Rochdale mosque

An imam who used “Dickensian”-style teaching methods at a mosque has been jailed for more than 100 attacks on young boys.

Abdul Rauf, 51, slapped, pushed or kicked the boys aged as young as nine while teaching them the Koran at a mosque in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

The children were too scared to complain of their beatings and the offending was not revealed until one victim told a teacher at his school that he and another boy had been assaulted at the Dar-Ul-Munawar Ghamkol Sharif mosque.

Police were called in October last year and officers seized CCTV of the imam’s classes. They scoured more than 40 hours of tapes and discovered footage of 109 assaults.

Rauf, a father of five, was sentenced at Minshull Street