Balram Sampla
Geopolitics
Geopolitics
(Asian independent) Twenty sexual offences. Five girls. Some of them just 12 years old. And the man accused of it all was handed bail and allowed to keep his passport. Amar Ilyas, 41, had already shown what he’d do with it. He had travelled abroad while on bail before. Nobody treated that as a warning. In July 2025 he boarded a flight to Pakistan, ignored a judge’s order to return, and left his victims to face the court without him. Last week he was sentenced in his absence to at least 27 years. He is serving none of them.
Who thought this was safe?
When his defence applied for bail, prosecutors had the chance to challenge it. No one reportedly asked for his passport. The government says bail is a matter for the independent judiciary. The judiciary can only rule on what it’s asked. So everyone had a hand in this, and no one owns it.
Ask any ordinary defendant.
Plenty of people have had passports taken for far lesser charges. Surrendering travel documents is routine when someone is a flight risk. Yet a man accused of raping children walked free with the one document that could take him out of reach of British law.
That gap is why people are asking whether this was two-tier justice. It isn’t proven. But when the same system that failed girls in South Yorkshire for years, partly out of fear of appearing prejudiced, as the 2014 Jay report found in Rotherham, makes another decision this baffling, suspicion is a reasonable reaction.
The victims paid for it.
One survivor was told he kept his passport because of his human rights. “He wasn’t humane towards other people,” she said. Another asked the question no official has answered: “Where is the justice?”
They have lived in fear while their abuser enjoyed more freedom than they did. Now extradition from Pakistan is notoriously difficult, and the NCA can only promise it is “determined.”
Fix it.
Anyone charged with serious sexual offences against children should surrender their passport as a default condition of bail. Prosecutors should be required to justify why not, not the other way round. Bail decisions should be reviewed whenever a defendant has a record of foreign travel.
A system that trusts the accused more than the abused has lost its way.
Note: The social media reports doesn’t show that Ilyas was treated differently because of his background. The more likely cause is a procedural failure, since no one applied to restrict his passport. .
Reference
1.https://www.easterneye.biz/rapist-who-abused-girls-in-sheffield-fled-to-pakistan-before-trial/
