"she has accepted my apology and the settlement."
Solicitor Akhmed Yakoob is believed to have paid thousands in damages to a teacher he “put in danger” after sharing a “fake” racism video with his followers.
Cheryl Bennett faced hate mail, abuse and threats, feared for her job and future and had people trying to “hunt her down” when she was wrongly accused of being a racist.
Yakoob, who runs Maurice Andrews law firm in Birmingham, is still under investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority over the incident.
Yakoob said he apologised to Ms Bennett after he named her during his video but he said that the incident, while a “mistake”, would not deter him from standing for public office in future.
He said: “I fully intend to stand again and am in discussions about a new political movement in the West Midlands.
“I have apologised and she has accepted my apology and the settlement.”
While he did not reveal the exact amount, Yakoob said it ran into the “thousands”.
Cheryl Bennett had been out supporting her teaching colleague, who was standing for Dudley Council, as a favour despite having no political affiliations of her own.
What followed was a barrage of notifications on her phone.
She traced the source, which was a TikTok video posted by Yakoob.
In the video, she was seen walking away from a house during the canvassing visits and making comments to someone out of shot – with captions overlaying the footage claiming what she uttered were racial slurs against Pakistanis.
Yakoob posted the footage onto TikTok and in his introduction, he said:
“I have no words for this, you can just make your own judgement … Those who are still in the Labour Party, now is your time to leave.”
He intended to demonstrate that the Labour Party was racist and urged members to quit the party.
Yakoob later posted the teacher’s name and place of work.
Ms Bennett said at the time: “It blew my life apart.”
Among those who commented were parents and pupils at the school.
Richard May, executive principal at Stuart Bathurst Catholic High School, said he was urged to sack Ms Bennett as the false racism video circulated.
Police also turned up at her home – a visit they later described as a welfare check, though at the time Cheryl feared she faced arrest.
Among the messages she received were from pupils, one said to her:
“I didn’t expect a teacher of your standard to be discriminative of races.”
She told her friend Qasim Mughal: “My life is over” and “my entire reputation has been destroyed”.
Ms Bennett said at the time: “It has been heartbreaking for me to go through this. I am still numb, it has been a nightmare.
“I have been unable to stop shaking, constantly on edge, it’s brought my whole world crashing down.
“It is not only detrimental to my career as a teacher but also to my identity.
“All my life I have been known as a polite, well-mannered, helpful good person and always had a very good reputation and that was blown up by one false allegation.”
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