Ahmed, whose birth name is Nazir Ahmed, was convicted of attempting to rape a young girl and sexually assaulting a boy under 11, and was originally sentenced to five years and six months in jail at Sheffield Crown Court in February 2022. However, three Appeal Court judges have since reduced the term to two years and six months.
Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice; Lord Justice Holroyde and Lord Justice William Davis concluded that the original trial judge Mr Justice Lavender “fell into error” when passing sentence. The judges stated that the fact that Ahmed was a child when he committed the offences had to be taken into account, and their decision followed a hearing in London in January.
During his original trial, the court heard that the abuse had taken place in Rotherham, and Ahmed had attempted to rape the girl on two occasions when he was aged about 16 or 17 and she was much younger. The attack on the boy also took place during the same period. Ahmed was found guilty of two counts of attempted rape against the girl and a serious sexual assault against the boy. He had originally been given two years for each of the attempted rapes, to run concurrently, with a further three years and six months for assaulting the boy.
The judges said that had Ahmed been sentenced shortly after the assault on the boy, he would have been 14 and a child with no previous convictions, and concluded that “a custodial sentence of six months would probably have been regarded as a suitable penalty”. However, they made no criticism of the sentence imposed in relation to the attempted rapes, which were offences committed by a teenager “against a very young victim
