{"id":36946,"date":"2026-01-21T03:05:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T03:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=36946"},"modified":"2026-01-21T03:05:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T03:05:06","slug":"imam-sentenced-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=36946","title":{"rendered":"Imam sentenced in London"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>An imam who carried out an illegal marriage ceremony for two 16-year-olds has been given a suspended prison sentence.<\/p>\n<p>Ashraf Osmani told Northampton Crown Court he was unaware the law had changed nine months earlier, raising the minimum marriage age in England to 18.<\/p>\n<p>The 52-year-old had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to two charges of causing a child to marry at Northampton Central Mosque in November 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Justice Choudhury, who accepted there was no &#8220;violence or coercion&#8221; and that the teenagers went to Osmani &#8220;entirely of their own volition&#8221;, imposed a 15-week jail term, suspended for 12 months.<\/p>\n<p>The two 16-year-olds were married, illegally, at Northampton Central Mosque in 2023<\/p>\n<p>The court heard the teenagers, who cannot be named for legal reasons, approached Osmani, from Northampton, after being turned away by another mosque.<\/p>\n<p>He agreed to carry out the non-legally binding Islamic nikah ceremony and charged \u00a350 for a certificate.<\/p>\n<p>After the ceremony, the court heard, the couple celebrated with friends.<\/p>\n<p>Defence barrister James Gray said Osmani had made one mistake in 20 years of conducting nikah ceremonies.<\/p>\n<p>Gray told the hearing Osmani had asked for passports to check dates of birth, completed an application form and filled in the mosque register correctly.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An imam who carried out an illegal marriage ceremony for two 16-year-olds has been given a suspended prison sentence. Ashraf Osmani told Northampton Crown Court he was unaware the law had changed nine months earlier, raising the minimum marriage age in England to 18. The 52-year-old had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}