A tape showing News of the World being offered a stolen ceremonial turban in a hotel toilet was shown in court today on the first day of a libel trial against the paper over an alleged plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham.
The recording showed the reporter - the paper's investigations editor Mazher Mahmood - meeting a circle of east Europeans he later alleged were plotting to kidnap the football star's wife.
On the covertly obtained film from October 2002, Mahmood, who is known as the "fake sheikh", is taken into a toilet of a central London hotel by an Albanian, Azem "Luli" Krifsha, and told he could have the jewel-encrusted headwear, which had been stolen by another man from Sotheby's, for £40,000.
Later, standing by the banks of the river Thames near Tower Bridge, Mahmood says he will give the matter some thought and speak to his Arab contacts. He also suggests to Krifsha and his associate, Rusu "Jay" Sorin: "Maybe we can do some other business".
Krifsha later pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods, while Sorin was charged but deported from the UK before his case came to court.
Other tapes to be shown later this week are to show conversations between other members of the group allegedly plotting a Beckham kidnap, including the man bringing the case, Alin Turcu, who has now left Britain to return to his native Romania. He is suing the News of the World for claiming he was a "surveillance expert" in a "murderous gang" plotting the kidnap of Beckham.
The alleged plot - said to involve a proposed £5m ransom and a threat to kill Mrs Beckham if her husband did not pay the money - was foiled on the eve of the publication of the paper in November 2002 after police were tipped off, and five men were arrested near Canary Wharf.
A trial in June 2003 collapsed after the Crown Prosecution Service said the main witness, News of the World informant Florim Gashi, was unreliable.
Turcu's advocate, David Price, is arguing that the plot was a "set-up" created by Gashi or Mahmood himself.
"It was clearly a high 'calibre' story that was going to sell a lot of newspapers and the primary concern was to get it published to the maximum benefit of the defendant," their legal argument says.
"Mahmood may well have believed that the 'gang' members were dodgy asylum seekers involved in criminality of a lower order than kidnap and murder.
"This would inevitably have impacted on the consideration of whether they would be able to maintain a defamation claim."
The News of the World's barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, today went through the paper's articles and a follow-up piece in the Sun the next day, detailing what parts of the story the papers stood by and what parts were not supported by evidence.
He said the allegations were "true or at least substantially true".
The case is being heard without a jury by Mr Justice Eady and is likely to see Mahmood, whose face is always disguised by the News of the World, take the witness stand.
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