June 22, 2015
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
By Joe Public A Bellingcat and Byline investigation can for the first time reveal Scotland Yard had intelligence Mazher Mahmood was corrupting police officers as far back as the summer of 2000. The Yard’s 1999/2000 Operation Two Bridges had surveillance on Mahmood in The Victory pub, in Thornton Heath, south London by CIB3 officers (also…
April 1, 2015
By Peter Jukes
Given the current febrile atmosphere of the election campaign here in the UK, this is worth revisiting. A comprehensive report by the Media Standards trust shows how politically targeted phone hacking at News of the World was – mainly under the editorship of Andy Coulson (the only surviving phone records to confirm hacking date from a…
March 17, 2015
By Peter Jukes
With considerable speed and grace, on Monday 16 March, Rupert Murdoch replied to Alastair’s letter, promising to co-operate with the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel inquiry, and explaining how News Corp‘s Management and Standards Committee have already complied with requests from the police and the IPCC. Questions about the role of News of the World and…
March 9, 2015
By Peter Jukes
Tomorrow marks the 28th Anniversary of the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan, and his family’s amazing decades-long campaign for justice. The police corruption around the most investigated murder in British criminal history has been described by an assistant Metropolitan police commissioner as one the biggest stains on Scotland Yard’s history. But Daniel’s murder also leads straight…
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…
Subscribe to our email list to receive a weekly selection of stories published by Bellingcat during the previous week, along with links to our favorite examples of open source research around the web.
Along with our published content, we will update our readers on events that our staff and contributors are involved with, such as noteworthy interviews and training workshops.