Twenty nine people facing a total of more than 170 charges relating to the sexual exploitation of 18 children will go on trial next year in three separate groups, a judge ruled last Thursday.
Twenty six men and two women appeared before a judge at Leeds Crown Court charged with offences including rape, trafficking, sexual activity with a child, child neglect, child abduction, supplying drugs and making of indecent images of children.
The 29th defendant, who is in custody, did not appear for the hearing.
The defendants were greeted by protesters outside the court building, where a number of police were on duty.
The allegations are non-recent sexual offences, dating back to between 2004 and 2011, and relate to 18 women, who were children at the time. The youngest child involved was 11 years old.
The defendants, who are mainly from Huddersfield but also include men from Dudley, Sheffield, Bradford, Manchester, and Dewsbury, appeared in groups before the Recorder of Leeds, Judge Peter Collier QC.
Judge Collier ruled that the cases will be heard in three separate trials starting in January.
The first trial, expected to last 10 weeks, has a provisional start date of January 8, 2018. The second trial, expected to last six weeks, is planned to start on April 16, 2018.
The third trial, which is expected to last four weeks, has the provisional start date of September 3, 2018.
The next hearings in each of the cases are: October 27, 2017; March 2, 2018 and June 1, 2018.
Formal pleas have not yet been entered and all the defendants were given bail except two – Mansoor Akhtar and Manzoor Hassan, who were remanded in custody. Akhtar did not appear in court.
The defendants in the first trial are: Amere Singh Dhaliwal, 34, Irfan Ahmed, 32, Zahid Hassan, 28, Mohammed Kammer, 32, Mohammed Aslam, 29, Abdul Rehman, 29, Raj Singh Barsran, 33, Nahman Mohammad, 31, Zubair Ahmed, 30 and Hamzha Ali Saleem, 37.
The defendants in the second trial are: Mansoor Akhtar, 25, Mohammed Akram, 31, Wiqas Mahmud, 36, Nasarat Hussain, 28, Sajid Hussain, 32, Mohammad Ifraz, 28, Faisal Nadeem, 30, Mohammad Azeem, 31, Zulqarnain Dogar, 29 and Manzoor Hassan, 37.
The defendants in the thirds trial are: Niaz Ahmed, 53, Mohammed Imran Ibrar, 32, Asif Bashir, 32, Everton La Bastide, 50, Saqib Raheel, 30, Usman Khalid, 29, Aleem Javaid, 27, Naveeda Habib, 38 and Shahnaz Akhtar-Malik, 55.
