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A tribunal has heard how Adil Khan, 51, and Qari Abdul Rauf, 52, say their right to a private and family life – protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – has been taken away from them by the order for them to leave the UK for Pakistan for good. They were given the order last July after they were both convicted of serious sex offences against young girls.

Khan got a 13-year-old girl pregnant but denied he was the father, then met another girl, 15, and trafficked her to others, using violence when she complained.

He was sentenced to eight years in 2012 and released on licence four years later.

Rauf, a father-of-five, trafficked a 15-year-old girl for sex, driving her to secluded areas to have sex with her in his taxi and ferrying her to a flat in Rochdale where he and others had sex with her.

He was jailed for six years and released in November 2014 after serving two years and six months of his sentence.

Neither Rauf or Khan were present for Thursday’s hearing, the Manchester Evening News reports.

Last month Khan told a preliminary hearing for the case: “We have not committed that big a crime.”

Their defence lawyers told an immigration tribunal case management hearing on Thursday that the cases should go “all the way to Strasbourg” because their human rights should be protected.

Khan claims to have renounced his Pakistani citizenship which would make him “stateless” and create a bar to deportation.

Sonali Naik QC, representing Rauf, who is receiving legally aid, said: “The matter needs to be thoroughly litigated.”

Ms Naik said the Article 8 appeals of Rauf and Khan should then be dealt with separately and individually as other similar cases have been dealt with in the past.

Cathryn McGahey QC, representing the Home Office, said the matters should be dealt with jointly as the background facts are the same.

Lawyers for both Rauf and the Government must now instruct experts in Pakistani law for the forthcoming appeal hearing on the issue of statelessness. That hearing has been adjourned until a date in September – around 13 years after Rauf and Khan first committed the offences.

Both were among four in the gang with dual UK-Pakistani citizenship, so liable to be stripped of UK citizenship and deported after then Home Secretary Theresa May ruled it would be “conducive to the public good” to deprive the four of the right to remain in Britain.

They were part of a nine-strong gang of Asian men convicted of sex offences against vulnerable girls in 2012.

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For two years from early 2008, girls as young as 12 were plied with alcohol and drugs, gang-raped in rooms above takeaway shops, and ferried to different flats in taxis where cash was paid.

Police said as many as 47 girls were groomed.

Khan, Rauf and another man, Abdul Aziz, then fought, and lost, a long legal battle against the deportation order, losing a final Court of Appeal ruling in 2018.

The failure to then deport any of the four, almost a decade after their conviction, has led to anger in Rochdale, where victims were living alongside their tormentors, and has heaped public criticism on a number of home secretaries.

The long-running case will extend to September at least and will probably go into next year.

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