A disgraced imam who fled to Bangladesh after being convicted of historical sex attacks on two girls he tutored has been jailed for 11 and a half years in his absence. Hifiz Rahman was captured on CCTV boarding a plane to Dhaka the day after a Wolverhampton Crown Court jury found him guilty of five counts of indecent assaults on victims as young as six.
During his sentencing it emerged that Rahman had a Bangladeshi passport, which the British authorities knew nothing about, allowing him to flee.
Rahman, who had diabetes, was on bail during the two criminal trials which saw him convicted, and was unable to attend some days after complaining of feeling unwell. Sentencing the 58-year-old for a “gross breach of trust”, Judge Nicholas Cartwright said Rahman had “deceived” not only the parents of his victims, but also his own solicitors and barrister at trial by lying about being sick.
Rahman had been on conditional bail to stay at his home in Ballard Road, Netherton, Dudley, and had surrendered his British passport before trial.
The father-of-seven, whose close family live in the UK, was excused from the last day of the second trial when the jury returned guilty verdicts on October 7, claiming he was again too sick.
Setting out the circumstances of Rahman’s flight from Britain, the judge said that when police went to check later that day that he was sticking to his bail conditions, they were told he was sick by a “member of the family”. But it emerged that officers “didn’t see him personally”, and the next day his son rang police to report he had “disappeared”.
A trawl of CCTV at Birmingham Airport confirmed he boarded a flight on October 8. Police said attempts to return Rahman to the UK are continuing.
