UK publication to pay APS180,000 for falsely linking Pakistani origin man to paedophile ring.

LONDON -- British newspaper Mail on Sunday agreed to pay APS180,000 to a former minicab licensing officer in the United Kingdom three years after publishing an article that falsely implicated him of facilitating a paedophile ring that was run by taxi drivers in Rochdale, The Guardian reported.

In 2016, a UK court sentenced 10 men for committing sexual offences against a teenage girl in Rochdale. The group comprised of men of Pakistani, BanglaAdeshi and Afghan origin who were sentenced for sexually abusing dozens of girls following an investigation centred on the town of Rochdale near Manchester. The court heard that the men groomed the girls with gifts and plied them with alcohol and drugs before forcing them to have sex with others.

In 2017, the Mail on Sunday published a story which claimed that Iqbal, who is of Pakistani origin and worked as a junior licensor for minicabs, was a "fixer" for taxi drivers 'at a time when some local drivers were raping underage girls as members of paedophile rings', The Guardian said.

As the case proceeded, the Mail on Sunday admitted that Iqbal was a member of a large team that looked over the licensing of cab drivers.

Iqbal accused the Mail on Sunday for involving him because of his race and said that following the article his "whole world crumbled" as he lost his...