Fake Sheikh 'worse than phone hacks'

Mazher Mahmood

A former British Attorney-General has called for a review of all convictions involving evidence from "Fake Sheikh" Mazher Mahmood, and the fall-out from the undercover journalist's reporting has been described as "far more serious" than the phone-hacking scandal.

Solicitor Mark Lewis, who helped expose phone hacking at News International and who is now representing some of Mahmood's victims, told the BBC's Panorama programme: "The damage that's caused, the damage for people's livelihoods, the amount of people sent to prison, it's a far more serious thing than phone hacking ever was."

Mahmood, who works for the Sun on Sunday, the title which replaced his former paper the News of the World when it was closed down over phone hacking, is suspended pending an inquiry by his employer.

He is also the subject of a police investigation into possible perjury charges after the judge in the collapsed drug trial of pop singer Tulisa Contostavlos said he may have lied.

A string of cases involving evidence from Mahmood has recently been dropped by the police and Crown Prosecution Service.

Former Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith told Panorama the reporter's track record - he boasts of having secured more than 100 convictions in a 30-year career - had to be re-examined.

"The fact that somebody who has been accused by a judge of apparently not telling the truth may be instrumental in those convictions would certainly be a reason to ... examine them to see whether they are safe."

The programme repeatedly showed close-up images of Mahmood on his phone in a car and wearing his favourite disguise of an Arab keffiyeh headscarf and long robes.

He has spent his career hiding his identity and has been allowed to give evidence from behind a screen in court cases and at the Leveson inquiry into media abuses. He tried to use legal argument to prevent Panorama from showing his face.

The programme's presenter John Sweeney said: "We are identifying him tonight to make it more difficult for him to entrap people in the future."

In 2002 Goldsmith was asked by a judge to examine the collapsed prosecution in a supposed plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham and her children, after it emerged that Mahmood had paid thousands of pounds to one of the alleged conspirators, Florim Gashi.

After the trial collapsed, Gashi made allegations which led police to launch an investigation into Mahmood, but it was dropped because of "insufficient evidence".

Mahmood has hit back at the programme, saying Gashi is "thoroughly discredited as a witness". His lawyer, Justin Rushbrooke, dismissed the programme as a "hatchet job".

- Independent