Mohammed Ahsen

A MEMBER of a grooming gang who sexually abused eight young girls is a convicted murderer with a history of violence against women, the Advertiser can reveal.

Mohammed Ahsen (35) was jailed for life in March 2006 for the murder of 19-year-old club-goer Kimberly Fuller, who he stabbed at the Escape nightclub in Ship Hill four months earlier.

Ahsen admitted three counts of indecent assault at the start of the trial of six other men, which concluded last month with guilty verdicts on 20 counts including rape, indecent assault and child abduction.

The sentences mean more than 500 years of prison terms have been imposed on defendants in trials relating to Operation Clover and Operation Stovewood, the two major investigations sparked by the damning Jay report in 2014.

Ahsen, formerly of Finlay Road in Eastwood, knifed Thorpe Hesley care worker Kimberly (pictured, below) after she accused him of touching her bottom.

He was ordered to serve a minimum of 19 years — later reduced to 17.

Ahsen — aged 21 and married at the time — had dropped the knife on a staircase as he left Escape and went to another club with a friend.

Kimberly had surgery on a three-inch wound to her neck at Rotherham Hospital but doctors were unable to save her.

At the 2006 sentencing in Sheffield, Judge Roger Keen branded Ahsen — previously jailed for threatening a former partner with a knife — “bad tempered, vicious and violent towards people, particularly women”.

The court heard that Kimberly’s last words to her mother were: “Mum, stop worrying. I’m 19 now.”

Her family later campaigned for airport-style metal detectors and scanners in nightclubs and backed a nationwide knife amnesty.

Five years prior to murdering Kimberly, when Ahsen was aged between 16 and 18, he indecently assaulted three girls aged under 16 in Rotherham and Maltby.

He admitted the offences this year after being charged by the National Crime Agency as part of their investigation into child abuse.

He was also charged with raping a Sheffield schoolgirl twice between 2000 and 2001 — but these charges were not progressed by the NCA after the alleged victim was found dead last year.

A court order made by Judge Michael Slater at the outset of the latest trial barred the press from reporting on Ahsen’s case, with no time-frame given when this would be lifted.

The Advertiser successfully applied for this restriction to be lifted after the outcome of the trial of six other men.

Following last month’s latest convictions, which saw five men sentenced to a total of 63 years, the overall jail time handed down to 38 defendants is 529 years and three months, including concurrent terms.

And this will rise when Ahsen and another defendant whose sentences were adjourned last month are dealt with.

Since the conclusion of the first Operation Clover trial in February 2016, only one defendant has been handed a suspended prison sentence and only three have pleaded guilty to all of their charges.