A Somalian whose deportation from Britain was dramatically halted after airline passengers staged a mutiny demanding his release was a convicted gang rapist who was being kicked out of the country because of his sickening crime

Officials escorting Yaqub Ahmed on a flight from Heathrow to Turkey were forced to abandon his deportation when around a dozen holidaymakers who felt sorry for him angrily intervened shortly before take-off. At one stage during the astonishing episode, filmed on mobile phones, one traveler complained: "They’re separating him from his family’", while others chanted "take him off the plane". When harassed security guards caved in and walked 29-year-old Ahmed off the Turkish Airlines flight, he was seen thanking those on board for their support as they cheered and applauded. One person was heard declaring: "You’re free, man!" But the passengers who thought they were doing a good deed were unaware that the man they were defending had been sentenced to nine years in jail for his part in a vicious gang rape of a teenage girl – and that another member of his gang later fought for Islamic State in Syria. Ahmed, 18 at the time of the rape and living in Clerkenwell, North London, is thought to have been granted refugee status after arriving in Britain from war-torn Somalia as a boy.