Why I applaud the CPS inquiry into Mazher Mahmood's stories
|
Version 0 of 1. From the moment Judge Alistair McCreath halted the trial of singer Tulisa Contostavlos on 21 July this year, the life and career of Mahmood has begun to unravel. After a quarter century of breaking controversial investigative stories, the reporter who has revelled in his fake sheikh moniker has become the story himself. The decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to re-examine Mahmood’s past stories ensures that the former headline-maker is now the subject of headlines. The CPS has not identified the 25 cases it is seeking to investigate, but on the basis of my own researches and various complaints down the years to me by victims of his questionable journalistic techniques, the number involved does not surprise me. Nor will it surprise the two men responsible for the Panorama exposé about Mahmood’s methods that was screened last month, producer Meirion Jones and reporter John Sweeney. During their research, they interviewed former victims and three Mahmood assistants who have turned against him. The BBC also withstood a legal attempt by Mahmood to prevent the programme from showing up-to-date images of him. He has long taken extraordinary measures to avoid being photographed. Most, if not all, of the 25 cases will involve Mahmood’s time as investigations editor of the News of the World from 1992 until its closure in 2011 following the phone-hacking scandal. But it is possible that his work at the Sunday Times and the Sun on Sunday will be scrutinised too. Since the collapse of the Contostavlos trial, he has been under suspension from the Sun on Sunday while its publisher, News UK, carries out an inquiry. I understand that the company has been at pains to ensure its internal investigation was scrupulous and it has also, wisely, been awaiting decisions by the CPS and by the Metropolitan police. When judge McCreath stayed the trial at Southwark crown court, he issued a damning ruling by saying that there were “strong grounds for believing Mr Mahmood told me lies”. He added that the underlying purpose of those lies was to conceal that Mahmood had been manipulating the evidence. In a thinly veiled condemnation of Mahmood’s tactics, McCreath also said the reporter had “gone to considerable lengths to get Ms Contostavlos to agree to involve herself in criminal conduct, certainly to far greater lengths than would have been regarded as appropriate had he been a police investigator”. She was alleged by Mahmood to have set up up a cocaine deal and was charged with selling the drug. The judge’s statements suggested that Mahmood might face prosecution for perjury or for perverting the course of justice. But that looked less likely as the months rolled by despite the CPS deciding to drop three other cases in which he was the main prosecution witness. The Panorama programme turned up the heat, not least because of the statements by Siobhain Egan, a lawyer who represented one of five men charged in 2003 with the kidnap of Victoria Beckham, and by Mahmood’s then assistant, Florim Gashi. It was the fact that Gashi was paid £10,000 by the News of the World that led to the case against the five being dropped by the CPS. Egan later called on the police “to begin a root and branch investigation, not just of my client’s case but into all of the Mahmood cases.” Her call was backed by Tory MP John Whittingdale, the chairman of the commons culture and media select committee. He said the Panorama revelations had increased the strength of the case for a new inquiry into Mahmood’s stories. But I have been doing that since at least the mid-1990s, when I championed the cases of the actor John Alford and the Earl of Hardwicke. I was outraged by the Beckham kidnap plot story, which led to five men spending seven months on remand in jail before the prosecutors dropped the charges. I also raised concerns about Mahmood’s story claiming that snooker player John Higgins had agreed to fix a match. He was eventually cleared of the fixing allegation but was suspended from the game for six months and fined £75,000. But I felt I was shouting about Mahmood’s dubious tactics without anyone listening, even when I revealed - as I did in January 2011 - that a man jailed after being entrapped by Mahmood had had his conviction quashed. Besnik Qema, an Albanian immigrant with British citizenship, was sentenced in 2005 to four-and-half years (reduced by nine months on appeal) for selling drugs to Mahmood. After his release he took his case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which decided that Qema’s conviction was unsafe and referred it back to the crown court, which agreed. So, in September 2010, Qema’s conviction was quashed. This was an extraordinary incident. Yet nothing happened. There was no discernible action against Mahmood at the News of the World. The CPS, which did not contest Qema’s appeal, did not inquire further into Mahmood’s stories. Why, oh why, has it taken so long for the CPS to take complaints about Mahmood seriously? |