Serial rapist flees UK on bail, leaving victims demanding passport seizure reforms

Amar Ilyas boarded a flight to Pakistan in July 2025 with his passport in hand, leaving behind three women who had spent years waiting for their day in court. He was supposed to return for trial in September. He did not. Instead, a judge sentenced him in absentia to a minimum of 27 years in prison for 20 sexual offences against five girls in Sheffield, crimes he had committed between 2004 and 2007 when his victims were as young as 12.

The women who survived his abuse are now asking a question that cuts to the heart of how the British legal system treats those accused of sexual violence: Why was he allowed to keep his passport at all? One victim, who was 13 when Ilyas assaulted her, told the BBC she had assumed his passport would be seized automatically after he was charged. "I was so disappointed in the law," she said. Another woman, who has learning difficulties and was in a vulnerable state when she was abused as a teenager, put it more directly: "Why, when he's committed these offences against us girls, was he allowed to keep his passport? That's my question. Where is the justice?"

The answer, according to reporting on the case, lies in a gap between what the prosecution could have requested and what it actually did. When Ilyas's defence team applied for bail—a process in which prosecutors have the opportunity to contest the terms—no request was made to forfeit his travel documents. He had previously travelled abroad while on bail and returned, which may have influenced the decision. The government, when asked about the case, deferred to judicial independence, saying that "decisions on bail restrictions are a matter for the independent judiciary." But the victims heard something different: that Ilyas's human rights to keep his passport mattered more than the safety and dignity of the women he had harmed.

One survivor described the contradiction with bitter clarity. "He didn't show any empathy so it was a really big insult when his human rights and feelings were taken into consideration," she said. Another spoke of the psychological toll of her abuser's freedom. While she felt unable to leave her home, he had boarded an international flight. "There is no justice is there really? He didn't take accountability. He's not getting any consequences for his actions."

Ilyas's case is part of Operation Stovewood, a National Crime Agency investigation into sexual abuse in South Yorkshire that has stretched across years and involved multiple perpetrators. His two younger brothers, Kamar and Kamran, are already in prison—Kamar for 10 years, Kamran for three—both convicted of sexual offences against one of the same victims. The family's crimes span decades and multiple victims, yet only Amar remains at large.

Judge Peter Hampton, who sentenced all three brothers in June, described Amar Ilyas as having "taken the coward's route and fled." In his remarks, he urged law enforcement to locate him and use "all means" to execute the outstanding arrest warrant. The National Crime Agency said it was making "every effort" to bring him before the court, though extradition from Pakistan presents significant legal obstacles that one survivor acknowledged she had been told about.

The three women have chosen to speak publicly—exercising their right to lifelong anonymity—specifically to demand change. They want passports to be removed from those accused of sexual offences before they are released on bail. Lucy Duckworth from the Survivors Trust called the case "absolutely appalling" and pointed to a deeper systemic failure. "It doesn't make sense the way we are treating this crime if we're saying, 'you're such a risk to society' and yet we're giving bail and we're allowing them the freedom to potentially commit that crime again or to evade justice by leaving the country," she said. She argued for specialist courts and better training for criminal justice staff in how to respond to sexual violence.

The women's fear is not abstract. They worry that other survivors, hearing what happened to them, will decide the system is too broken to report abuse at all. One said: "There are survivors coming forward but survivors might not want to come forward after hearing something like this." For now, they hold to hope—one woman said she checks each day, wondering if tomorrow might bring news that Ilyas has been found. But hope, they know, is not the same as justice.