January 3, 2015
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
The gun supplier of Mazher Mahmood’s failed Victoria Beckham kidnap plot was NEVER contacted by Scotland Yard investigating Mahmood in Operation Canopus in 2005 – despite the five defendants spending up to eight months on remand before being released after the case collapsed when it was discovered News of the World had paid the key…
December 11, 2014
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
Metropolitan police’s Operation Silverhawk, an investigation into Sun on Sunday’s Fake Sheikh Mazher Mahmood is being led by Commander Martin Hewitt – who was one the senior investigators in Operation Varec which was part of John Yates discredited investigation into phone hacking at Mahmood’s News of the World in 2010. Minutes from ‘Gold’ Group meeting which was chaired by Yates shows Commander Hewitt present as one the more senior investigators in the team at a meeting in September that year.
December 5, 2014
By Peter Jukes
Yesterday, the CPS announced it has dropped three cases and is re-investigating another 25 after a BBC Panorama documentary detailed the potentially questionable ways one of News UK’s most senior and prolific reporters, Mazher Mahmood, obtained his stories using his famous Fake Sheikh identity. The night before, at the second Leveson memorial lecture delivered by…
November 20, 2014
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
Last week, BBC finally aired the long awaited Panorama exposure of Sun on Sunday reporter Mazher Mahmood after a two week battle between lawyers from both camps at the high court before the judge eventually ruling against Mahmood’s application for injunction to halt the programme. What was most surprising of all was the somewhat bizarre…
November 17, 2014
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
A law firm acting for Mazher Mahmood once described the law on private entrapment such as Sun on Sunday’s Fake Sheikh as “perverse” – in comparison to the law that “protects against the state causing citizens to commit illegal acts.” David Sleight, a criminal lawyer for Kingsley Napley, under the title of ‘The Law Regarding…
November 14, 2014
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
Suspended Sun on Sunday reporter Mazher Mahmood is being investigated by the same Crown Prosecution Service unit that signed off his now questionable cases in the first place. Rather than call in a unit based outside London, the CPS Special Case Work are investigating Mahmood and effectively themselves, and its not clear if past Mahmood…
November 12, 2014
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
By Joe Public Sun on Sunday reporter Mazher Mahmood released a statement yesterday attacking BBC for being “irresponsible” and “not in public interest” who are “hell bent” to broadcast Panorama exposing his career as a fake sheikh entrapping targets before shopping them to police. In what seems like his final attempt to the stop public broadcaster,…
November 10, 2014
There were sea changes at the Metropolian Police Service (MPS) and at the News of the World (NOTW) as the 1990s came to a close. The new MPS Commissioner – John Stevens – wanted to encourage positive press through a closer relationship with national newspapers. At NOTW a new editor – Rebekah Wade – had…
November 10, 2014
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
By Joe Public Only three years after the closure of News of the World, and two years after the launch of its replacement Sun on Sunday, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp parent company of subsidiary News UK is about to be engulfed in yet another serious scandal. This time, the allegations are far more serious than…
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