Mazher Mahmood sentence: 'Fake Sheikh' jailed for 15 months for tampering with Tulisa case evidence
Members of the public shout ‘your turn Mazher’ and ‘enjoy it’ as former News of the World reporter is taken down
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‘Fake sheikh’ Mazher Mahmood has been jailed for 15 months for tampering with evidence in the collapsed drugs trial of pop star Tulisa Contostavlos.
The former undercover journalist, 53, was convicted earlier this month alongside his driver Alan Smith, 67, following a two-week trial at the Old Bailey.
They were found guilty of plotting to pervert the course of justice by conspiring to suppress evidence at the former N-Dubz singer’s trial.
Ms Contostavlos had been accused of supplying cocaine but the case, which came about after a story published in The Sun on Sunday, was thrown out of Southwark Crown Court in July 2014.
Judge Gerald Gordon jailed Mr Mahmood for 15 months, saying that while he accepted he had done “some good work” in his long career, there could be no justification for what he had done and custody was inevitable.
He handed Mr Smith a 12-month sentence suspended for two years, saying he had been motivated in part by “misguided loyalty”.
As Mahmood was jailed, someone in the public gallery shouted “your turn now Mazher” to the journalist.
Shouts of “enjoy it” were also heard, according to the Court News UK Twitter account.
Mr Mahmood claims to have helped in the convictions of 100 criminals during his 25 years of investigative reporting for the News of the World, its successor The Sun on Sunday and The Sunday Times.
Immediately after the sentencing, News UK announced he had been sacked. The journalist, from Purley, south London had previously been suspended from the company.
Following the guilty verdicts last month, it was announced that 18 civil claims were being launched against Mr Mahmood, which could total some £800m.
The Crown Prosecution Service has already dropped a number of live cases and reviewed 25 past convictions.
Six of those involving mainly high-profile individuals have been taken up by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Ms Contostavlos always maintained her innocence and following the collapse of the Southwark trial insisted: “I have never dealt drugs and never been involved in taking or dealing cocaine.
“This whole case was a horrific and disgusting entrapment by Mazher Mahmood and The Sun on Sunday newspaper.”
The singer had been accused of arranging for Mr Mahmood to be sold £800 of cocaine by one of her contacts following a sting for the newspaper in May 2013.
During a meeting at the Metropolitan Hotel in London, Mr Mahmood posed as a film producer and plied Ms Contostavlos with alcohol as they discussed an acting role alongside Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio.
As Mr Smith drove the former X Factor judge home to Hertfordshire, she allegedly spoke about a family member who had a drugs problem.
When he was interviewed by police about the journey more than a year later, Mr Smith recalled the anti-drugs conversation. But a day later, after speaking to Mr Mahmood and emailing his draft statement, the singer’s anti-drugs comments were removed, the court heard.
At a pre-trial hearing, Mahmood denied being an “agent provocateur” or that he discussed the statement with Mr Smith.
But when he was questioned at length in the trial, Mr Mahmood appeared to concede he had talked to Mr Smith about what Ms Contostavlos said about drugs in the car.
Prosecutors said Mr Smith and Mr Mahmood had a “vested interest” in Ms Contostavlos being convicted.
Additional reporting by Press Association