The undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood is “undoubtedly a controversial figure” but his journalistic techniques, though some might find them “distasteful”, are not on trial, an Old Bailey jury has been told.
The journalist, known as the “Fake Sheikh”, with a reputation as the “king of the sting”, had no motive to conspire to change a witness statement in the collapsed trial of pop star Tulisa Contostavlos, said his defence lawyer, John Kelsey-Fry QC.
Mahmood, 53, and his former driver, Alan Smith, 67, deny conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by tampering with Smith’s police statement in order to remove anti-drugs comments allegedly made by the former N-Dubz singer.
The comments, in which Contostavlos allegedly said she disapproved of hard drugs because a family member had a drug problem, were said to have been made as the former X Factor judge and two associates were driven home after meeting Mahmood, who had posed as a Bollywood film producer offering her the possibility of a lead role.
The trial of Contostavlos for allegedly arranging for Mahmood to be sold cocaine worth £800 was subsequently thrown out.
In his closing speech, Kelsey-Fry said the case against Mahmood was “fundamentally flawed, illogical and defies common sense”.
The prosecution alleged that Mahmood had “manipulated” Smith’s statement because he feared the first version would help Contostavlos at her trial, or at a pre-trial hearing where her lawyers were attempting to get the case against her dismissed.
“That, they say, is the motive,” said Kelsey-Fry. The lawyer questioned whether Mahmood would have had anything to fear from that first version. “If the answer to that question is no, then this entire prosecution doesn’t make sense.”
In April 2014, before the singer’s trial, police had asked if there were tape recordings of the car journey, so Mahmood would have known there was a defence focus on what was said in the car, Kelsey-Fry said. Smith did not give his police statement until June 2014.
If Mahmood had wanted to pervert the course of justice, he would have discussed it with Smith before the driver gave his police statement, the lawyer said. “He wouldn’t be saying, ‘Send me a copy of what you said’ afterwards, when the damage had been done.”
Yet the prosecution alleged “he let the horse bolt”, then tried to cover it up to deny Contostavlos the advantage, said Kelsey-Fry.
Smith told police he changed his statement to exclude Contostavlos’s anti-drugs comment because he was not sure he had remembered it correctly one year later. The driver had told police it was a “horrendous journey”, and that Contostavlos and her associates had been drinking. “Drunk, rowing, screaming, someone trying to jump out of the car,” said Kelsey-Fry.
“Of course Smith was likely to have an insecure recollection of what was said by whom in the car. Indeed, think about it, it would be impossible to imagine anything else.”
He said the evidence showed Mahmood had “absolutely nothing to fear” from Smith’s original statement, and the argument that Mahmood had a “vested” interest in securing the singer’s prosecution was an example of the prosecution case being “fundamentally flawed”.
Kelsey-Fry said of the journalist: “Securing convictions is not actually his job.” If the Contostavlos case had been stopped, because of the argument of entrapment, “would that be the end of the world for Mr Mahmood, if she had done what the newspaper said she had done?”
Mahmood had presented himself to the singer as a “party animal” who used cocaine. “Obviously you can’t go and test someone to see if they will supply drugs dressed as a vicar,” the lawyer said.
The anti-drugs comments, made when Contostavlos thought she was in public with an unknown driver, rather than in private with Mahmood, were “not earth-shattering” and would not have stopped her trial “in its tracks”, said Kelsey-Fry. The comments did “nothing to displace the evidence volunteered from Tulisa’s own lips”, the lawyer added. “And Mr Mahmood knew that.”
When Smith was questioned by Contostavlos’s lawyers ahead of her trial, he readily told them he had sent his draft statement to Mahmood, Kelsey-Fry said.
Kelsey-Fry said no evidence was called in Mahmood’s defence because “there is not evidence to challenge by way of cross-examination”. The only reason for giving evidence was “if the prosecution have established a case sufficiently compelling to call for an answer”.
The prosecution case was not compelling, he said, and “flies in the face of reason”.
Mahmood and Smith both deny conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
The case continues.
