Pervert newsagent jailed for assaulting girl aged 11

A NEWSAGENT assaulted an 11-year-old girl in his shop 16 years after being jailed for sexual offences against children he employed to deliver papers.

Mohammed Asghar, 56, told his 11-year-old victim: "I am a therapist and that's what therapists do".

Asghar, a prisoner in Saughton, had pleaded guilty previously at Edinburgh Sheriff Court to assaulting the girl on June 17 this year in his shop, Moons Newsagents in Mayfield Place, Dalkeith.

Sentence was deferred until yesterday for reports.

Sheriff Isobel McColl said she had to take regard of Asghar's previous conviction and that in this case there had been an element of trust involved.

She imposed an extended sentence of four years and nine months, with a custodial element of one year and nine months and three years' supervision.

Asghar was jailed for five years at the High Court in Edinburgh in 1994 for offences involving three girls and a boy, aged between ten and 15 years, in his shop in Leith.