A FORMER Labour peer has been jailed for sexually assaulting two children.
Lord Nazir Ahmed, who resigned from the Lords in 2020 but retains his formal title, was sentenced to five and a half years behind bars today.
In January the former politician was found guilty of two counts of attempted rape against a young girl, aged five or six, and one of buggery of a boy aged under 11 in the 1970s when he was aged 16.
There are now calls for him to be stripped of his title as Lord Ahmed of Rotherham.
The 64-year-old was jailed at Sheffield Crown Court by Mr Justice Lavender today.
The judge told Ahmed: “Your actions have had profound and lifelong effects on the girl and the boy, who have lived with what you did to them for between 46 and 53 years.
“Their statements express more eloquently than I ever could how your actions have affected their lives in so many different and damaging ways.”
The victim of the attempted rapes read her own victim personal statement in court, saying: “An overwhelming feeling of shame remained with me throughout my childhood and early adult years.
“It was a burden I was made to carry, and it silenced me for many years.
“It is now time for me to pass that burden to him – the paedophile who I know feels no personal shame.”
She added that Ahmed had however now been “publicly shamed” for his actions.
Ahmed’s two older brothers Mohammed Farouq, 71, and Mohammed Tariq, 66, were also charged with indecent assault in relation to the same boy that Ahmed abused.
Both men were deemed unfit to stand trial, but a jury found that they did the acts alleged.
Farouq and Tariq were both given absolute discharges after the judge said the only other two options – a hospital order or a supervision order – would not be appropriate in this case.
A victim personal statement from the male complainant read in court said being sexually abused by the three men had “affected me on a daily basis” and left him unable to show affection to his own children.
He said: “I buried the abuse and carried it with me on my own for years and years.
“I feel shame because of what these men did to me.
“This is not about revenge, this is about justice.”
In mitigation, Imran Khan QC said Ahmed had “devoted his life to public service” and that his “fall from grace” had been “in the full glare of publicity,” including a campaign for him to be stripped of his title.
Mr Khan said: “That very good reputation he had has gone.”
The judge said that according to legal guidelines, the sentence must be in line with the one that would have been imposed at the time the offence was committed.
He jailed Ahmed for three and a half years for the offence of buggery, and imposed two concurrent sentences of two years for each of the attempted rapes.
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