Peter Burden » Fake Sheikh

When will Mazher Mahmood have the collar of his djhellaba felt?

Peter — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:27:04 +0000

All the obvious hacking suspects at the now brown-bread Screws have been rounded up, EXCEPT the arch twaddle peddler of them all, the Fake Sheikh, AKA Mazher Mahmood. And yet, today Guy Pelly was given £40,000 by the paper for their criminal hacking of his phone. Pelly was a regular target of Mahmood, who spectacularly failed to nail the young club operator (and Prince William’s friend) in a hopelessly bodged sting in Las Vegas. Other high-profile hacking victims who were targeted by Mahmood include Kieran Fallon – in another failed sting.

For what sinister reason is Mahmood immune to the police’s attention?

Does he know more about their evil deeds than any of the other ‘journalists’ on the defunct rag? It’s unlikely that he’s a member of the same Masonic Lodge, unless the Masons are now recruiting from ethnic minorities.

Why have News International continued to employ him at the Sunday Times? Why did the Leveson Inquiry grant him a non-visible hearing?

Why did the Crown Prosecution service allow the Pakistani cricketers to be tried for a victimless offence and a non-crime which Mahmood had fabricated?

Another Fake Sheikh bungle… another hapless, innocent victim

Peter — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:19:44 +0000

Yet another – and not the last – Fake Sheikh scam has bitten the dust. Snooker player John Higgins has been found Not Guilty of accepting bribes for the match-fixing mendaciously reported by the News of the World. Although Mazher Mahmood must be relieved that his victim has been fined £75k for being such an arse as to be taken in, it seems grotesquely unfair that Higgins has been penalised for being a victim of entrapment by the nation’s sleaziest hack.

Mazher Mahmood has no interest in the truth, only in the size of his headlines. He has consistently made up stories and more recently tried to illustrate them with crassly bodged up, badly dubbed videos. The Pakistani bowlers will almost certainly be shown to be victims of his ham-fisted doctoring of the “video evidence”.

It’s extraordinary that any serious purveyors of news still take his stories seriously.

The News of the World should be shut down before they do any more to damage the reputation of this country and its citizens.

Another shameful case of entrapment by the News of the World…..

Peter — Mon, 24 May 2010 05:00:19 +0000

How helpful is it, how meaningful, when the sleaziest reporter on the nation’s sleaziest paper sets up another victim in a completely implausible scam?
Mazher Mahmood is notorious for fabricating stories out of nothing, creating and casting scenarios that he hopes will make a front page splash in the News of the Screws – like he did with the non-existent Beckham “kidnap” story; like he did with the so called “Red Mercury” scare.
He often identifies victims, people in the public eye, who might have fallen on more difficult times, and tempts them with an opportunity to make some easy money.
The Duchess of York may have wondered why on earth some obscure businessman wanted to meet Prince Andrew but if he was offering £500,000 to her to make the introduction, it probably seemed too good a chance to pass up. She shouldn’t have responded, although she may have recognised that the introduction wasn’t going to help this punter in the slightest. There is no way in which meeting Prince Andrew could have made any money for an international businessman. The prince functions only as an ambassador at governmental levels, not as an entrepreneur or a trader in his own right; he doesn’t do deals, make or even influence anyone else’s business decisions. It was clearly a preposterous request that was never going to come to anything. In other words Sarah is being accused of taking part in a negotiation that could never have come to anything. Of course she should have turned him down, but maybe she just thought he was a rich businessman who wanted to upgrade his own self-esteem by rubbing shoulders with royalty. He would not, she would have realised, have been the first to suffer from that kind of pathetic aspiration.
As usual, Mahmood has created a non-existent misdemeanour for her to commit, and has done whatever he can to embellish the story in such a way as to make the biggest impact. The claims the paper’s story make are scarcely backed up in any visible way by the video they show online.
The quality of the pictures is deliberately bad, to obscure the detail. It is not at all clear that the pile on the table is a stack of $40,000. We see no transfer of this into the black bag with which Sarah leaves. (Mahmood claims they did this in another room – why didn’t they fill the bag on camera?) The reporter’s voice is obscured and, confident that the Duchess could never sue or go through the business of challenging their version, they may well have subsequently matched the words to their story. No single specific money-making deal is mentioned.
Since they were offering £500,000 for doing very little, and she evidently needs the money, Sarah went along with the idea that it would be helpful for this man to meet Prince Andrew, although there was no obvious way in which it could be.
While Sarah should not have agreed to meet the man, and she’s the first to admit that her judgement in these things is not good, no harm could have come because it was based on an entirely bogus premise, which is why stories acquired like this through entrapment are completely meaningless, other than making public figures look silly for the entertainment of those people dim enough to read the News of the World in a non-ironic way.
Mazher Mahmood has a long history of creating stories that cause a sensation for 24 hours before they then sink without trace. This could be another of them.

Fake Sheikh Hits New Low

Peter — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:48:46 +0000

There was a time when the News of the World’s much-heralded “investigations editor”, Mazher Mahmood was creating stories that made the front page of the paper every few weeks. But over the last half dozen years, as his antics have begun to cost the paper, and the country, more and more in wasted police time, legal expenses and libel pay-outs, his name has been seen less and less and further back in the paper.
       The former glory with which editors and management, like the disgraced Stuart Kuttner and Andy Coulson, tried to endow him has been replaced by a well-earned reputation for dishonest and inaccurate reporting, incitement to crime, illegally using his employer’s funds (with their connivance) to buy class A drugs, phone hacking, invasion of privacy by the use of covert video camera, entrapment and defamation.
       But just to show he’s not quite a spent force (and because management can’t get rid of him as long has he knows where so many bodies are buried in Wapping), this week on, page 20 of the illustrious paper, he reveals the stunning news that a former employee of the later Michael Jackson is in a position to sell a tiny piece of pleated black satin that was, he assures the tireless Fake Sheikh, one of the innumerable face-masks that the late tweeny popster liked to wear to avoid direct contact with the pervasive aroma of LaLa Land and uptown LA where he was conducting rehearsals for the O2 Show that was never to be.
       It’s a feeble, easily garnered story by any standards, which, brought in by a less luminary hack, would merit no more than 100 words, with, of course, a mug shot of the late Wacko. Perhaps, one day soon, common sense, and Young Master James will prevail, when the Fake Sheikh, his sycophantic entourage of One, and all his works and pomps will be cast into the fiery furnace where they belong. And the Cats of Kensington will see justice done.

Fake Sheikh unveiled

Peter — Sun, 24 May 2009 09:14:38 +0000

We are waiting with eager curiosity to see the strength of Mazher Mahmood’s resolve to keep his identity secret. The News of the World has previously sought and been granted injunctions against the publishing of photographs showing his likeness, notably against the Guardian, after George Galloway rumbled him in February 2006. In the new paperback edition of News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings, we have published a clear, unequivocal shot of Mahmood in his bogus middle eastern garb when he came to sting Princess Michael of Kent. He is standing with his friend, travel agent Aseem Kazi, who posed as Pervaiz Khan, potential buyer of Prince Michael’s house, Nether Lypiatt. Behind them is the pilot of the helicopter, hired by News International to bring them there, and to enhance the deception.

As a thoroughly discredited journalist on a morally bust newspaper, it seems unlikely that he would have any case to put to a judge to preserve his anonymity. He has wasted millions of pounds in police time, court time, and prison service costs by causing innocent men to be held on remand for months at a time, following some of his highly fanciful investigative stings. He is a menace to the public and, as demonstrated by his story in last Sunday’s Screws, pointing up security weaknesses at Buckingham Palace (for any potential terrorist to see), a serious danger to national security.

The Screws’ Fake Sheikh shows Al Qaeda the way

Peter — Sun, 24 May 2009 08:55:51 +0000

This morning, below absurd and dangerously alarmist headlines and with characteristic disregard for the security of the Queen and this nation, the News of the World’s so called “Investigations Editor”, Mazher Mahmood has once again attempted to bolster his putrid reputation.

Under the outrageous pretence that he is helping national security he has produced a story of how he bribed a man to show him around the Royal Mews and allow him to sit in one of the Queen’s cars.

While no doubt it will be useful to Palace security people to learn that there is a subornable man on the staff in a position to initiate this kind of minor security breach (they were in a building hundreds of yards from the Queen herself), any benefit is completely eclipsed by Mahmood’s consuming need to see his name on the front page of Britain’s most dangerous newspaper.

If he and his editor the hapless little Colin Myler truly cared a jot about national security, they would have handed their findings and evidence to the Palace and kept very quiet about it.

But this was not about protecting the Queen or country, it was entirely, exclusively about selling newspapers by publishing headlines designed to scare gullible readers. The paper’s headline this morning was:

QUEEN TERROR BOMBSHELL

There was no terror; there was no bomb.

By publishing the (fairly paltry) details, they send a clear message to enemies of this country –

If you want to breach security, come on in – it’s easy!

Were it not for the fact that Mazher has not been seen to practice Islam with any commitment since childhood and is, therefore, unlikely to have Al Qaeda tendencies, one could be tempted to wonder whose side he is on.

In the photos published in today’s paper, the face of the “middle eastern businessmen” who bribed one of the Queen’s chauffeurs has been pixelated – no doubt for non-existent ’security’ reasons. If you want to see what Mazher Mahmood looks like, in the paperback editon of my latest book, you will find a picture of him, in full bogus sheikh mode with a smile on his face, arriving by chopper at the home of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.

News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings – now on sale at £7.99 – Amazon and most good book shops. See opposite.

The Fake Sheikh's fake sting in the slums of Mumbai

Peter — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:32:12 +0000

Just when we thought he’d finally run out of bad ideas, Mazher Mahmood, clapped out “Investigations Editor” of the News of the Screws, has managed to squeeze his by-line on to the front page of the notorious Shag Rag once more. No doubt in the wake of Madonna’s failed attempt to adopt a second child in Malawi, the counterfeit sheikh has concocted a massively spurious claim that Indian child “Slumdog” star, Rubina Ali was offered ‘for sale’ by her dad, Rafiq Qureshi.

On the basis of an unsubstantiated, selectively edited conversation, almost certainly driven by Mahmood’s skill in extracting the answers he wants, spineless Screws editor Colin “There Will Be Fewer Celebrity Stings In Future” Myler allowed the dangerous fantasist to spin and twist it into 5 pages of his ‘newspaper’.

One can only hope that the 3 million purchasers of the News of the World (one is reluctant to call them readers) are so accustomed to this kind of sensationalist twaddle from Mahmood and his colleagues that they will just laugh – as they so often do.

‘It’s a load of effing crap,’ as a wise London cabby described the paper to me. ‘But it’s a good laugh, innit.’

But it’s not – not if, like Rubina and her family, you’re at the receiving end of its malicious fictions.

Those who wonder why the Screws keep on the Fake Sheikh, now that he’s more of a liability than an asset, should understand that Mahmood (like Shag’n’Brag supremo, Neville ‘Onan the Barbarian’ Thurlbeck) knows where far too many bodies are buried for management ever to show him the door.

Only the total destruction of the Screws will put an end to the careers of these evil, sanctimonious hypocrites masquerading as journalists.

Sea, sand and the Fake Sheikh

Peter — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:44:58 +0000

The wi-fi is a little erratic at the Druidston Hotel, perched on a cliff top in the western extremities of Wales. But wi-fi of any sort is unexpected in the wonderful other-timeliness, which is part of the unique charm of this place, one of the loveliest hotels in Wales, if not Britain. Communications are thus a little tortuous, and encourage more time for the greedy filling of lungs with ozone charged with sea spray, heather and bracken while striding the hairy undulations of the coast path.

Nature chucks in a soundtrack of twittering oyster catchers, keening gulls and squawking choughs (oh yes, Mr Oddie), supported by the ceaseless thud and hiss of waves onto the broad sands of Druidston Haven.

Stress flees, formerly quivering ganglions are stilled, problems that seemed insurmountable simply fade away.

But there are always a few tasks that must be done, tasks so ingrained as to be inescapable to a point where a sense of deprivation sets in if they’re ignored – like writing this blog.

Although remoteness makes it hard to keep in touch with the rest of the noisy, smelly, messy, bad breath, bad karma world, I know the best place to catch our sporadically dodgy wi-fi connection. In the old farmhouse kitchen of the hotel there is also intermittent chat to be had with Jane Bell, who owns the place with her family. She’s ironing children’s clothing for one of the guests (no wonder she’s become everyone’s favourite granny).

We talk about the intelligence of Jack Russell terriers, the wickedness of the Kennel Club, the influence of the hippy generation on 21st Century British culture and attitudes.

Then the connection goes.

I drive a few miles between bent-over hedges and fields of pasture-munching, black & white milk manufacturers to the ancient bastion of Haverfordwest. I’m on an important mission; I want to take advantage of a very generous offer from the News of the World. I have a little voucher snipped from yesterday’s paper with which I can claim from W H Smiths a 50% discount on a new book, Confessions of a Fake Sheikh, by the tabloid’s star investigative reporter, Mazher Mahmood.

The claim must be made between August 31st and September 14th – “while stocks last”!

But oh! What a let down!

W H Smiths don’t have copy! And the computer says there are none in the warehouse. I can’t even order the book.

I am especially upset. Known for having studied the methods of the great investigator, I’ve been asked to review the book, which Harper Collins, the publishers originally said would be out on September the 15th.

It’s all jolly mysterious.

It had been rumoured that the News of the World, who belong to the same News International gang as Harper Collins, were going to serialise the book, starting last Sunday 31st, followed presumably, given a publication date of September 15th, by the next two Sundays. Then, last Sunday, without any front-page strap, buried in the middle of the paper on pages 38 & 39 is a brief resumé of the book by another Screws journalist, headlined with a crappy and implausible pun, SHEIK AND AWE.

Mazher Mahmood must be spitting with rage in whatever secretly located luxury penthouse apartment he now occupies. Surely they were going to give his book a proper send off?

And even the not very subtle wheeze of a ½price offer to Screws readers to help it up the charts isn’t going to work if there aren’t any in stock and W H Smiths aren’t talking orders.

What’s gone wrong?

Is there a last minute hitch?

Is the book so bad and boring they’re ashamed to let it out without a serious re-write?

Are there legal problems?

I can hardly wait for next Sunday.

Meanwhile, there’s the bracing west wind, long spells of warm sun (after the Guardian had plonked a huge fat black pissing cloud over Pembrokeshire), and all those stress-releasing aromas…