Jewish lawyer, who fought for a Pakistani’s rights in UK, says he understands what discrimination is

LONDON: A Jewish lawyer who fought and won the case of a British-Pakistani in London against a UK newspaper said he took up the case because as a Jew he could feel what it was like to be discriminated against.

Defamation law specialist Mark Lewis, who is based both in London and Southern Isarel, told in an interview that as soon as he saw article in Mail on Sunday (MoS) by David Rose targeting Pakistani man Wajed Iqbal, linking him with pedophiles and sex crimes, he could tell that the Pakistani Muslim had been stitched up to create a story.

Related: Daily Mail pays millions in damages for defamatory article targeting British-Pakistani man

Three weeks ago the Associated Newspaper Limited (ANL) — the publishers of the Daily Mail, Mail Online and the Mail on Sunday — settled £1.2 million case with Iqbal after accepting that the allegations made against him in an article published in MoS in August 2017 were false and had no basis in truth.

 Iqbal, speaking to Geo News, said he had no doubt that David Rose and MoS had picked on him because he was a Pakistani and Muslim.

Lewis, a leading lawyer fighting anti-semitism and prejudice, said, “The whole thing about Jewish people is that they know what bigotry is like as Pakistani Muslims in the UK do. I grew up in northern England, like Wajed Iqbal, where my Jewish cousin who has no Pakistani background was hurled the slur of ‘Paki’ by people when we were teenagers and mistook his looks Pakistani youth. Coming from a Jewish background, I know when there is discrimination against a particular community. I choose to stand up for the victims of prejudice.”

Lewis added, “It shows that the poison that exists is due to a hatred of people who are different. They don’t need any rationality of logic.” 

The lawyer further said racism and Islamophobia were the main factors why Iqbal was targeted by Mail on Sunday in its story. He explained, “My client was a low ranking officer in the local authority who was involved in the licensing of taxis.

He was picked on as being the person in charge of licensing taxis because if you get a Pakistani Muslim involved in taxi licensing in England, you invite prejudice. A huge scandal was orchestrated which shook the Pakistani community.

The building blocks of the controversy were Pakistani, Muslim and taxi. Put them all together and you find a scandal. The only thing is that it wasn’t true. If anyone did any research that conclusion would’ve been reached.”

He added, “It seems very obvious to me that he was targeted because he was a Muslim with a Pakistani background. Some people weren’t Pakistani Muslims who were more senior and more involved in taxi licensing in the same department as Iqbal but they were ignored but my client was targeted because of his background.”

He said the MoS received documents from the local authority showing that there wasn’t any truth to these allegations.

The lawyer said, “Whether its anti-Muslim bigotry or not, the story focused on a Muslim only because he was a Pakistani Muslim. That was the entire story. The test is not what David Rose thought but what the readers thought. David Rose said ‘there is a Pakistani Muslim taxi driver who is involved in something wrong’. It was biased. The timing was also suspicious as that time a BBC programme focused on the Rotherham scandal to mislead the public and created an unnecessary connection.”

Lewis said that the MoS was expecting a non-party disclosure, hoping that the documents from the local authority would show that Iqbal was guilty however the documents showed quite the opposite.

“They showed my client hadn’t done anything he was accused of. Iqbal took every step to ensure that those who would have committed any wrongdoing were brought to the attention of the local authority. When the Mail on Sunday found this, their initial reaction was to wait for more information from the local authority which exonerated their victim. When he was exonerated, the Mail on Sunday knew they had no other choice but to negotiate with my client.”

Read more: David Rose says he’s not anti-Muslim

Iqbal had been wrongfully accused of acting as a “fixer” for paedophile taxi drivers in the May 2017 article.

The 44-year-old had sued the Mail on Sunday stating that his life had been ruined by the defamatory article, leaving him reliant on anti-depressants, jobless, and prevented from seeing his children.

He had told the court that the Mail on Sunday picked on him because of his Pakistani heritage, his racial background — linking him with a disgusting scandal to create a false story.

Mail on Sunday’s reporter David Mail has stressed that he’s not anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim. David Rose spoke around three weeks ago after both Lewis and Iqbal had accused the paper of anti-Muslim bigotry. David Rose says he’s fighter against racism and allegations of racism and bias were false.