Mazher Mahmood: Difference between revisions

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Mazher Mahmood is an undercover reporter for the British tabloid newspaper News of the World.^[1]

After a long series of exclusive exposes, with the News of the World claiming he has brought 234 criminals to justice,^[2], many of which he often poses as a sheikh in order to gain his target's trust, he is also known as the "Fake sheikh." In September 2008, he wrote the book Confessions of a Fake Sheik - The King Of The Sting Reveals All published by Harper Collins.^[1]

Little can be confirmed of Mahmood's background, the majority of which he has provided himself. His only face to face televised interview was with the BBC's Emily Maitlis, on the Andrew Marr Show in 2008, to publicise his book.^[3]

In his 2008 book,^[1] he claims to have been born in the Midlands, the son of two immigrant Pakistani journalists who settled in the UK in the 1960s. Mahmood claims that his late father, Sultan Mahmood, set up the first UK national newspaper to be published in Urdu, and later the first glossy Urdu magazine, printed at a local press and manually collated and stapled together by the Mahmood family in their kitchen.^[4]

He got his first job as a journalist aged 18, exposing family friends who sold pirate videos. This gained him two weeks work at the News of the World, after which he started freelancing at Sunday People. In 1984, while trying expose a vice-ring at the Metropole Hotel at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, while working with fellow journalist Roger Insall, he first used the "Fake Sheikh" disguise to entice prostitutes to a hotel room.^[4]

He then worked for the The Sunday Times, which according to the International Herald Tribune he joined in 1989. Then editor Roy Greenslade suggested that he was dismissed for an attempted cover-up of an error he had made,^[5] while Mahmood claims he resigned. Mahmood claims to have been a producer on the TV-am programme of David Frost, and joined the News of the World in 1991.^[1]

Mahmood works secretively, rarely going into the News International offices. Written into Mahmood's contract is a clause stating that his photograph will never be published in the newspaper. If he features in photos that accompany his stories, his face is always concealed and a silhouette is used next to his byline.^[6]

During his investigations, as well as the "Fake Sheikh," Mahmood also uses the identity of businessman Sam Fernando.^[7] He is often accompanied by a bodyguard, said to be his second cousin Mahmood Qureshi, who often poses as businessman Pervaiz Khan.^[8]

Although Mahmood has helped to expose crime, many find the way he does it both morally and ethically distasteful. His former boss Roy Greenslade and politician George Galloway are both critics,^[9][4] while lawyers have argued that Mahmood's conduct, backed by the editorial policy of the News of the World, deliberately involves serious breaches of the Law of England and Wales.^[6]

Mahmood has picked up various industry awards, including Reporter of the Year for his expose of Newcastle United directors.^[10] At the awards ceremony, a figure attired in full sheikh's outfit, with the face covered, went up to collect the award. The robes were then thrown off to reveal Kelvin Mackenzie, former editor of The Sun.^[6]

On 30 March 2006 the politician George Galloway claimed that Mahmood and an accomplice "sought to implicate me in what would be illegal political funding and sought my agreement to anti-Semitic views, including Holocaust denial". Galloway wrote to the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, and the speaker of the House of Commons about the incident, saying that I believe this attempt to subvert the political process constitutes a breach of parliamentary privilege. In his letter to the Speaker's office Galloway also claimed that Mahmood had in the past deceived Diane Abbott and had sought a meeting with Jeremy Corbyn, both also prominent anti-war MPs.^[11][12] The News of the World tried to secure a High Court injunction preventing publication of photographs of Mahmood, even on weblogs, but were granted only a temporary injunction, which expired on 7 April 2006.^[13] Galloway sought to thwart this tactic by brandishing a photograph of Mahmood, during an interview on Channel 4 news.

Political targets of Mahmood's investigations have included Minister David Mellor, who resigned following his affair with actress Antonia de Sancha. Environment Minister Tim Yeo was caught cheating on his wife, and both his secret love child with Julia Stent,^[14] and earlier adopted daughter were revealed.^[15]

He has repeatedly entered the UK in the back of lorries and using fake passports to highlight lax immigration rules. Corrupt Home Office officials and corrupt police officers, solicitors and crooked doctors have also been targets.^[4]

On 24th January, the News of the World claimed Mahmood had caught his 250th villan, when Conservative councillor Suresh Kumar demanded a £10,000 bung to pass a planning application. The 44-year-old was found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of corruption and jailed for 12 months, banned from holding any public office for five years.^[16]

Mahmood claims to have been involved in over 130 successful criminal prosecutions including alleged arms dealers, drug dealers, numerous immigration racketeers and several paedophiles. He has also been responsible for jailing a doctor who wanted his mistress - another doctor - to be murdered, with Mahmood taken on as a hit man.

In September 2004 he posed as a Muslim extremist to "expose" three men who were trying to buy radioactive material for a suspected Muslim terrorist group seeking to carry out attacks in the United Kingdom. The men were later found not guilty following a trial at the Old Bailey, with the judge criticizing the News of the World for not checking the credibility of the story before printing.^[17][18]

Mahmood won the "Reporter of the Year" award in 1999 for his exposé of Newcastle football bosses Freddie Shepherd and Douglas Hall, who mocked fans and branded Geordie women "dogs" after taking Mahmood posing as the fake sheik to a brothel in Marbella.^[10]

Footballer John Barnes was caught by Mahmood twice cheating on his wife with two different lovers, and Ian Wright was also caught having an affair. Footballer John Fashanu was exposed for match fixing. Fashanu offered to fix matches for Mahmood and took a cash deposit. After being exposed, Fashanu claimed he knew about the sting all along, and was going along to gather evidence for the police.^[19]

In January 2006, Mahmood met up with England head coach Sven-Göran Eriksson, posing as a businessman interested in opening a sports academy, but Eriksson asked him to take over Aston Villa FC instead. Eriksson revealed how he would leave England after the World Cup to become Aston Villa manager, and that he would approach David Beckham from Real Madrid to become captain. On 23 January, the Football Association announced that Eriksson would leave his job after the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and it was thought that the News of the World allegations played a part in this decision.^[20] This was later denied by both parties, with Eriksson explaining that there was a prior arrangement to terminate his contract immediately after the World Cup.

On 28 March, 2010 Mahmood exposed former world champion boxer Joe Calzaghe for taking cocaine. The boxer and Strictly Come Dancing contestant came clean after being caught red handed in a sting, vowing to seek help for his drug problems.^[21]

In May 2010, Mahmood exposed World Snooker Champion John Higgins and his agent Pat Mooney for apparently agreeing to fix the outcome of future individual frames which would not necessarily alter the course of a match. Meeting in a hotel room in Kiev, Ukraine on the morning of Friday 30 April, where Higgins and his manager had travelled after his exit from the 2010 World Championship, to ostensibly meet the undercover News of the World team the newspaper described as men posing as businessmen interested in organising a series of events linked to the World Series of Snooker. In video, it is alleged that Higgins and Mooney had agreed to throw four frames in four separate tournaments in exchange for a €300,000 total payment.^[22] On the publication of the story on Sunday 2 May, Barry Hearn, Chairman of the WPBSA, immediately suspended Higgins from WPBSA tournaments, promising a full investigation, stating "Those responsible, if proved, will be dealt with in a very harsh and brutal way. People have a right to see pure sport – that's what I want snooker to be." Mooney resigned from his post as director of the WPBSA.^[23]

Mahmood's targets include various society figures, most notably Sophie, Countess of Wessex in 2001^[24] and more recently Sarah, Duchess of York in 2010^[25]

Mahmood was responsible for reporting an alleged plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham to the police. The subsequent trial collapsed after it emerged that Mahmood's main informant, Florim Gashi had been paid £10,000 and could not be considered a reliable witness, and was later deported from the UK.^[26][27] One of the men involved later sued the News of the World for libel but lost.^[28]

Mahmood reported the revelations that John Alford was supplying cocaine, for which he was imprisoned. Alford claimed entrapment and demanded Mahmood's arrest; the trial judge made the observation that 'entrapment had clearly played a significant part in what he did, but greed had also been a major factor."^[29] However, when Alford appealed to the High Court and the European Court of Human Rights, the appeals were rejected.

Other celebrity targets exposed for drugs have included model Sophie Anderton who was exposed by Mahmood as a drug-taking prostitute.^[30]

In 2004, Mahmood led an investigation into exposing the creation of a "dirty bomb," through the supply of red mercury to three men from a supposed terrorist group. Mahmood was registered as an informant for the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch during the story, which lead to a criminal case prosecution by the Crown Prosecution Service. The case, signed off by the Attorney General, collapsed in July 2006.^[4]

• BBC News Story on Mazher Mahmood
• BBC News Story - Is this the end for the 'Fake Sheik'? - 25 July 2006
• Mazher Mahmood activity against illegal immigrants in May 2006
• Copy of the legal injunction sent to a blog owner in the UK barring the publication of Mahmood's picture
• Associated Press Story - Britain's 'Fake Sheik' in Media Glare - Aug 14, 2006