[ominous music]
[Zee] I was online and saw this profile.
I asked him what his name was and he said, Mazher Mahmood.
He made me feel like I was the only thing that mattered.
And then I said, I'm curious, I need to know what you look like.
And he sent me some photos.
But he had his face blocked out.
I was just thinking like, who is he?
I'd asked him like, you know, what is it that you do?
And he said he was a businessman.
And to be honest, I just accepted it and carried on,
didn't think anything of it.
Well, it went from businessman to working in the government,
so, I was a little bit confused.
I start asking, so what part of the government are you in?
And he said I can’t tell you that for safety reasons.
[car engine starts]
Then I thought to myself, well, am I in danger? That type of thing.
And then one day he says, do you wanna meet me?
And I said OK.
But I said, I need to know who I'm meeting.
And then he told me, he said you know, I don’t work for the government.
I’m an undercover journalist.
And I was like, wait what?
That’s how it all started.
Maz didn’t allow people to take photographs of him.
But he allowed me to take them,
and he took hundreds of photographs of both of us together.
[camera shutter]
The thing is everybody thought that they knew the Fake Sheikh.
But I knew the man behind it.
I knew Mazher Mahmood.
[tyres screeching]
[tense music]
[reporter] The trial of Mazher Mahmood, the journalist known as the Fake Sheikh,
has opened at the Old Bailey.
[Jodie Kidd] It was so unbelievable it was believable.
You know, this can’t be fake.
[reporter] For 30 years he has revelled in hiding his identity.
[George Galloway] His anonymity, his secrecy
was the key to his entire act.
[reporter] The self-styled King of the Sting,
turning up to court every day beneath a balaclava.
[Jeremy Dein] I think he was ruthless, dishonest and a merciless individual.
[reporter] Mazher Mahmood has been behind some huge tabloid scoops,
things like uncovering match fixing in Pakistani cricket
and a plan to kidnap Victoria Beckham.
[Neil Wallis] Maz played on this caricature,
that money literally could be no object
and if you got close, you could grab your share of it.
[Emma Morgan] I hate to say it, but he’s very very very good at what he does.
[tense music fades out]
[suspenseful music]
In the late 90s, Maz had won Newspaper Reporter of the Year.
He was so proud of that.
This man was the number one investigator,
reporter, whatever you want to call him.
[Paul McMullan] But in the early 2000s,
the News of the World started phone hacking
on an industrial scale.
News employed Glenn Mulcaire as a private investigator
to hack people’s phones and listen to their messages.
[camera shutters]
Maz hated it.
A, it was illegal.
B, it was cheap, shoddy, shitty journalism.
But Glenn Mulcaire brought in so many stories at a really low cost.
And because that was so successful, we didn’t need Mazher anymore.
We could just listen to their messages, i.e., it was a lot cheaper.
[Aylia Fox] The tabloid world, it was high pressure, high stress.
You were only as good as your last story
and you knew that you could be kicked off if you didn’t perform
and people regularly were.
He would have been expected to produce big stories
and to be fair to Mahmood, his own ego would have demanded of himself
that he produced big stories.
[Paul McMullan] Mazher had to up his game to prove that his old school techniques
were worthwhile, worth the budget and worth going for.
[music intensifies]
In 2002, I was a Detective Inspector
in the kidnap and specialist investigations unit.
Mazher Mahmood told us they had an undercover informant
that had infiltrated a gang of Eastern Europeans.
Nobody should be in any doubt,
Maz was very, very good at cultivating sources.
He had lots of underworld contacts
and would pay them if they gave us good tips.
With this one, he struck gold.
[Ian Horrocks] He provided us with shocking audio of the gang
talking about kidnapping an extremely high-profile person.
It’s not a problem to get her.
How much would you ask?
For five million I think is fine.
It’s not a problem, in-
a hundred percent from cases they pay.
You’ve got one week to bring that amount of money in there.
-Yeah. -If it’s not in there,
I gonna cut her in pieces, that’s all.
[tense music]
[Ian Horrocks] He told us that the intended victim of the kidnap
was Victoria Beckham.
[paparazzi shouting]
To be perfectly honest, the first words that went through my mind
were, “Oh fuck, what do we do now?”
[indistinct chatter]
[Neil Wallis] I think it’s important to remember at the time,
David and Victoria Beckham were just about royalty.
Breathing was headline news.
So, a kidnap attempt on the Beckhams
would be one of the biggest stories in the world.
They were going to stake out the Beckham’s mansion.
And when Posh Spice drove out, they were going to ambush her,
kidnap her, drug her, and hold her to ransom.
If she had her children with her, they were going to kidnap them too.
Five million pounds they were going to demand.
[tense music]
[Ian Horrocks] We were also shown a shocking video
of one of the suspects
handling what clearly appeared to be a handgun.
Mauser.
German.
German?
Okay.
Very good.
Very safe.
Very powerful.
[Ian Horrocks] All of a sudden this had become extremely serious.
There was an incredible threat to life
and authority was given for the deployment of a firearms team.
[dramatic music]
What we do over the next few hours
could mean a matter of life and death for someone.
[Neil Wallis] Maz set up a meeting with the gang, in a hotel car park.
[Ian Horrocks] The firearms team were laying in wait.
The gang turned up.
The firearms inspector said ‘Go.’
[dramatic music fades out]
You’ve got to give it to him, I mean the guy had balls, the guy had balls.
That’s why they loved him at the News of the World.
The kidnap attempt on the Beckhams was a sensation.
It sold like hot cakes, to use a cliché.
Good evening. Scotland Yard said tonight they’d foiled an alleged plot
to kidnap Victoria Beckham.
[reporter] Victoria Beckham's spoken of her absolute and total shock this morning
saying the news has scared the life out of her.
[reporter] Five men who are due to appear in court
to face the kidnap charges on February the 24th.
It was absolutely terrifying for me and my family.
I mean it really was horrendous.
Now can you leave your house without bodyguards?
No, we don’t go… we don’t go anywhere.
And your children, nowhere without bodyguards?
-[David] Nowhere. -[Victoria] No.
[tense music]
So, months later there was the trial.
There were various allegations and counter-allegations
about the News of the World evidence.
[Ian Horrocks] The members of the gang stated that they were set up
and it was all the idea of the informant.
The media and elsewhere were saying
that the whole thing had been set up simply for a front-page story.
[reporter] The case was dramatically dropped today.
Defence lawyers said that there was no kidnap plot
and their clients ended up in custody
because of a flawed News of the World investigation.
[Paul Connew] When that case collapsed,
a lot of people thought that would be the end of Mazher Mahmood’s career.
But then the informant said that he’d totally made it up
and that it was just for the money.
We planned this so-called kidnap plot.
I personally did it because of the money.
It was a total lie.
They tried to blame the News of the World and Mazher Mahmood
but it wasn’t us that did anything wrong here.
We had quite rightly gone to the police
and presented all our evidence.
The Police and the Crown Prosecution Service decided to proceed
and then they got cold feet at the trial.
In fact, a judge even said in court that he had no reason
to actually doubt that Maz genuinely believed
the plot was anything other than genuine.
Was this solely an invention of the informant,
was it something that was actually said by other members of the gang
or was it manufactured by others?
I simply don’t know.
[tense music cuts out]
[Aylia Fox] The bosses would have preferred obviously the case to proceed
and a conviction to be brought.
It would have been the icing on the cake
but in the general scheme of things, nah, I’m not sure it really mattered.
What mattered was the story at the time
and the sensation that it caused.
[Neil Wallis] After the kidnap attempt on the Beckhams,
Maz, he knew we wanted what he had to give.
The breaks were taken off him. He was told, 'Go for it Maz.'
[dramatic music]
That time at the News of the World
was his greatest, most productive time.
All the things he did were international news stories.
It’s like, wow, how does he pull this off week in, week out?
[Neil Wallis] We’d put up huge posters of our great front pages.
It was inspirational.
A lot of the Fake Sheikh investigations were up there.
He loved going undercover,
he loved getting these stories, he loved exposing people.
It was his thing. That’s what he did.
I remember when we were in Dubai on a trip.
He took us to the marina for lunch
and there was this beautiful yacht
and he says that yacht is where I did my last story.
He’d said that he had done a sting on Sven-Göran Eriksson.
[tense music]
-[paparazzi shouting] -[camera shutters]
[Neil Wallis] Sven-Göran Eriksson was the manager
of the England football team at the time.
In this country there is barely a bigger sporting job.
Sven was rarely out of the tabloids.
He’d had a string of affairs
and scandal seemed to follow him wherever he went.
A Sven story always sold newspapers.
Maz had heard that Sven was fishing for lucrative job offers.
The World Cup was just around the corner,
and he should have been focusing on the team,
but instead he was out there busy looking for his next paycheck.
The betrayal of it was simply massive.
But you know what? A massive story.
So, Maz came to us with this remarkable plan.
This was going to cost tens of thousands of pounds.
But our faith by this stage in the Fake Sheikh was such,
we said go for it.
One of Maz’s people contacted Sven’s agent.
And said would Sven consider in setting up and running
a football academy in Dubai?
"Yes, he would be interested."
"Would he like to fly first class for a weekend
"to meet the Sheikh who’s going to bankroll this?"
"Yes, he would."
[upbeat music]
Now, Sven’s agent had a very, very clever legal advisor
called Richard Des Voeux.
Quite sensibly, before any talk about going to Dubai,
Des Voeux wants to come to the office in London to meet.
There is, however, a complication.
There isn’t an office.
So, what do we do?
We create an office.
[intense music]
We rent a lavish office space.
We fill it with fake pictures of the Sheikh
with various celebrities.
It was a complete gamble.
I never, ever, ever thought
I’d find myself in the News of the World.
You’d see other stings that'd happened to other people
and I’d read them in the confident knowledge,
"Mate, that’s never going to happen to me."
The offices looked extremely high-level.
There were pictures of the Sheikh with high-profile individuals.
That obviously gave me a degree of comfort
and security in terms of who I was dealing with.
[Neil Wallis] The problem with this guy, Des Voeux, who is a legal eagle,
he's also very clued up about the Middle East
and starts rattling off statistics about economics
and they are completely out of their depths.
At that stage I was just dealing with someone who was
a representative of some kind of the Sheikh,
so it was very difficult to pin him down on the detail
of any specific aspect of the project.
However, they were at pains to underline
the quality of the hospitality that would be afforded.
First class flights, rooms at the most luxury hotel in the world.
I think unquestionably, an element of our thinking
was that there was nothing to be lost by just accepting the invitation.
Go over and hear them out, hear what they’ve got to say.
[Neil Wallis] But what Maz realises,
he needs to avoid this lawyer.
They were making it very clear that the hospitality in question
would be for Sven and Athole, Sven’s agent, and not for me.
Clever move.
It was actually Athole who insisted I be there.
He then said, well just tell them I’ll fly you out.
All this is just making life ever more complicated.
Because the guy is frankly what we call a smart arse.
[Des Voeux] Sven and Athole were picked up by a limousine,
chauffeured to Heathrow.
I, on the other hand, made my own way.
I got a standard flight over.
[Des Voeux] I met Sven and Athole at the Burj Al-Arab.
It’s been designed with the express intention of making an impression.
And it does make an impression.
What Maz knows is they will believe and fall for everything
if they buy into the idea that this is wealth beyond their wildest dreams.
[dramatic music]
The Sheikh greeted Sven extremely warmly.
He clearly had absolutely no interest
in addressing me or engaging me in conversation in any way,
which was fine.
We were very conscious of wanting to respect local sensibilities.
Sven had specifically asked
whether it would be insensitive to order or drink wine.
The advice that we’d given him was perhaps let’s not.
The Sheikh didn’t just offer wine,
he was insistent to the point
that we began to think that it would be rude not to.
It was, shall we say, a certain test
to see whether they flinched when I ordered something nice.
So, I ordered something nice.
They were drinking thousand-pound bottles of wine.
The wine was fabulous, the wine was the best thing about the evening.
[Neil Wallis] It was indulgence beyond belief.
And he fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
[Des Voeux] The first ten, 15 minutes of conversation
were just about what their plans were.
We maintained a very firm line
that Sven’s focus was 100 percent on the World Cup.
The Sheikh then asked for other ideas.
[Neil Wallis] Sven’s agent mentions there’s a football club for sale
and wouldn’t the Sheikh like to buy it,
and wouldn’t Sven make the perfect manager?
It didn’t seem particularly contentious to me.
To be quite honest, it still doesn’t now.
All he was doing was investigating
what could be an interesting avenue
in the event that the FA wished to move on to pastures new,
post-World Cup.
At no stage during that meal did Sven commit to anything
or say he would do anything.
What happens next is typically Maz.
[Moby, "Porcelain" playing]
He decides he wants more time alone with Sven.
So, what do you do in that situation?
You hire yourself a luxury yacht.
And hang the expense, what’s 10 thousand pounds a day
to land this story?
["Porcelain" by Moby continues]
[Des Voeux] The yacht unquestionably reinforced our confidence
that we were dealing with people who had the means to follow through
on the project that was under discussion.
There’s no doubt, dealing with someone from a different country,
a different cultural background,
there was perhaps a degree of being overly respectful
because I didn’t want to come across as rude.
Had he been a white bloke from south London,
I probably would have been a lot more hard-headed
than I felt it was my place to be.
They then offered us if we’d like to have a swim before lunch.
And… [chuckles] Sven initially indicated
that he might be open to having a swim.
So, on that basis we thought, OK well, if we’re all swimming, let’s swim.
By the time we were then changed to have a swim,
Sven had decided he wasn’t swimming.
I resolved to have a quick jump in,
swim around in a couple of circles and get back on the boat.
[Neil Wallis] So finally, Maz has Sven where he wants him,
where they can have a quiet chat about the financial deal.
And recording equipment can pick up every word.
[Neil Wallis] And what damning words they are.
[radio chatter]
[Des Voeux] I had got back to London.
[phone ringing]
I knew the second I saw my phone ringing that there was a problem.
The first thing he said is, Rich you’ll never believe it,
the whole thing was a News of the World sting.
Your mind is racing.
How is this going to affect you, how is it going to affect your clients,
how is it going to affect your family, how is it going to affect your reputation?
I could remember feeling almost as if someone had punched me in the stomach.
It was the most astonishing newspaper sting that has ever been.
Three words in really clear huge bold type,
"Sven’s Dirty Deals."
It was entire front page.
The next two pages, the next two pages,
and the next two pages after that.
It got picked up by everybody, it ran and ran and ran.
The England football coach, Sven-Göran Eriksson
is at the centre of fresh controversy.
[reporter] He was the victim of a classic tabloid sting
in which the bait was bagfuls of cash and he bit.
[reporter] During a conversation with an undercover reporter,
he began talking about being prised away from England
to theoretically run Aston Villa.
The content of the article was laughable.
Huge chunks of it were wildly different from what had actually been said.
Some of it was exaggerated, some of it was made up,
some of it was just plain lies.
[reporter] There had been question marks over Sven-Göran Erikson’s commitment
to the England cause in the past,
but now there is one over his integrity.
The way it was then processed,
the way it was then dealt with by the general public,
that was really shocking to me.
They should get rid of him.
He has caused a lot of scandal.
He’s been mediocre, I think.
We should have an English man doing the job.
[journalist] Sven, are you planning to leave England?
[Des Voeux] In terms of Sven personally, in terms of Sven professionally,
the knock-on effects of that incident
are very significant.
[reporter] The search is on for a new England football coach.
The current boss, Sven-Göran Eriksson has agreed to step down from the top job
after this summer's World Cup.
[reporter] England are out of the World Cup
after losing their quarter final to Portugal on penalties.
[Neil Wallis] Predictably, he blamed the News of the World
and Mazher Mahmood.
If we were genuinely doing something against the public interest,
fine, you might look at it and think, you got me.
But really?
We’re going out to hear someone out on a proposal
that didn’t amount to much
and for that, you want to basically try
and destroy three people's lives and reputations.
Big chunk of you just thinks, what a bunch of arseholes.
You know?
[intense music fades out]
[Emily Maitliss] Mazher Mahmood, alias the Fake Sheikh
is the king of the celebrity sting.
But is this a legitimate form of investigative journalism?
He defends his controversial working methods.
Is there a moment when you think, they’re quite a nice person,
am I really going to ruin their life like this?
We only expose people who are involved in criminal and moral wrongdoing.
They are legitimate subjects for our investigations,
and it is our job as investigative journalists
to make sure the public get to know the truth.
That’s what the paper’s done for 165 years
and will carry on doing.
[Paul Samrai] It takes a certain type of person to cut it
as a successful undercover operative.
To be able to deceive people day in and day out,
you know, befriending targets
and then getting what is required for the story out of them.
Working for Maz, I found that I had an easy facility to do that.
I believe that developed through the pressures of childhood.
We were the first wave of immigrant children born in the UK.
Father came over here to better the life of his children.
Good education, that was the key, so my father sent me to a prep school.
To do that, he had to have three jobs.
So a lot of pressure was put on us first-generation kids to succeed.
To become lawyers, doctors, engineers.
To put it crudely, what you had was the frustrated ambitions
of our parents put on to us.
Because of the pressure, we developed a coping mechanism,
and that coping mechanism from a very early age
was lying.
It would be your parents, "Right, how was school?" "Brilliant."
"What was your test result?" "I got 10 out of 10."
All lies.
Just to get away from that pressure.
I developed a totally different moral compass.
My background is very similar to Maz’s,
so I know how he ticks, because I tick in the same way.
For Maz, the end justifies the means.
I feel that Maz is misunderstood
because people have this assumption
that he’s ruthless, mean,
will do anything to get a story,
which is so untrue and so unfair.
I think what people don’t know about him is that he was very kind,
very generous, he was a family man,
he was very loyal to his friends.
There were sides of him that were very good, very good.
My time with Maz was like a whirlwind.
I remember telling Maz, oh my God, I used to, you know, be crazy
about David Cassidy.
-A few days later I got a CD. -[David Cassidy: "I Think I Love You"]
And it was all of David Cassidy’s songs
and the first one was “I Think I Love You.”
♪ I think I love you ♪
He love-bombed you.
So that you would feel valued.
You would feel a part of a family.
You would feel wanted.
In this way, he would get you to do the things
that he wanted you to do.
[Zee] I started doing stories with him.
It was nerve-racking. [chuckles] But it was fun.
♪ I think I love you So what am I so afraid of? ♪
♪ I'm afraid that I'm not sure of... ♪
We travelled everywhere, doing stories together.
When I would come to London to spend time with him,
I never knew where I was going.
♪ I think I love you ♪
New York to Las Vegas to India to Dubai.
I had to get a new passport because it had filled up.
I was fortunate to be part of some of the stories
where he made a difference,
where he helped.
Big stories that he did like the Haiti baby,
he really walked away from those feeling really good.
There was one story that I don’t think any one of us anticipated
for it to be as big as it was.
Slumdog Millionaire was a Hollywood blockbuster.
It had Dev Patel in it, Frida Pinto.
Rubina Ali played the younger version of Frida Pinto.
[interpreter] Are you going to be a movie star?
-Yes. -[interviewer] Yes!
[Zee] Rubina was discovered in the slums. She is actually a slum child.
Maz was tipped off that Rubina’s father was planning on selling her.
Desperate people do desperate things.
[dramatic music]
When we arrive in Mumbai,
you know, I’d asked him, I’d said how is this going to happen?
I remember Maz telling me, he said, I need you to play a Dubai princess.
The story was how I had seen the movie, I’d seen her,
I really liked her.
I was childless.
I wanted to be able to adopt her
and take her back and give her a better life and education.
Rubina, her dad, her uncle arrived at the hotel.
Maz talked to them and said, do you want her to adopt?
And they said yes, but the father had changed the price,
from, I believe it was £50,000 to £200,000.
Because now he knew it was a Dubai princess.
I was watching them and seeing how excited they were.
And I’m thinking, OK, he’s capable of doing it.
[intense music]
The article goes out the next day
and for me at least,
I didn’t expect it to blow up the way it did.
It had become massive.
There are stunning claims
in the British tabloid, the News of the World
that the father of one of the child stars
in the Oscar-winning film, Slumdog Millionaire
tried to sell his daughter to an undercover reporter.
Had Maz not gotten involved,
how do we know some paedophile would not have come,
and said here, here’s some money, and taken Rubina.
So, I’m grateful that the story came to him,
and we were able to save this child.
[reporter] Ali’s father says the papers made false allegations against him.
He says he’s being framed.
Police in India say they won’t file any charges
and now say the matter is closed.
I remember Larry King had called him
and said he wanted to speak to him and have him on the show.
Larry King had interviewed just about everybody,
anybody that was famous
and then here he was requesting to have Maz on his show.
He was on the phone,
I was clicking pictures. [laughs]
Larry King says to Maz, it’s an honour to have you on the show.
And I was just like, wow, OK,
Now I’m impressed.
He’s made it.
[Larry King] Mazher Mahmood on the phone.
Are you standing by your story that the father
absolutely tried to sell this little girl?
[Mazher Mahmood] 100% Larry and let me tell you,
that I had three days of consecutive meetings
with the father, Rafiq and other members of his family.
It made Maz a global sensation.
He went from being known in the UK,
to being known all over the US,
all over the world.
For years he was writing stories
and through time, he became the story.
[reporter] You must have nerves of steel.
It’s what I do, I'm an undercover reporter.
Exposing criminals and moral wrongdoing is what we do.
[Paul Connew] Broadcasters would often indulge this mystery man persona.
And I think eventually, he fell in love with that persona
and the celebrity status it gave him.
We are recording you in a way that won’t expose your identity.
The nature of my work, I use subterfuge
so if my identity were revealed, I couldn’t work.
[Zee] We always laughed because he was the most unfamous famous person around.
They knew his name,
but didn’t know his face.
What was shocking for me,
he was so famous as the Fake Sheikh,
but people were still falling for it.
The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, has been secretly filmed
allegedly plotting to introduce a News of the World reporter
posing as a businessman to her former husband, Prince Andrew.
[reporter] Ferguson apologised, saying her well known financial problems
are, quote, "No excuse for a serious lapse in judgement."
He’d become almost a national institution.
He achieved what he set out to achieve.
To be one of the best investigative journalists
ever, to be quite honest.
Mahmood was at the top.
He was at the top. He was the king of the tabloids.
He’d been on Larry King, he’d been interviewed by the BBC,
but that wasn’t enough.
Maz’s ambition was insatiable.
He wanted real power,
the power that could make or break prime ministers, governments.
The power that only tabloid editors have.
His ambition, he said to me,
was to be the first Asian editor on Fleet Street.
To succeed, he had to impress Rupert Murdoch.
[indistinct chatter]
I think Maz was a very complex character.
On the outside he was full of self-esteem, confident,
brash, arrogant.
I think the inner Maz was a different sort of person.
I honestly believe he lacked self-esteem.
I think he always felt the need to prove things to people.
[Paul Samrai] He craved the adoration, respect of his elders
at the News of the World from the proprietor down.
He wanted to be one of them.
So, one night I get a call from Maz.
Rupert Murdoch was coming to visit and he said, I’ve got to have a big story.
In those years, one of the fixations
of the tabloid press was immigration.
The two main problems were, one, the immigrants coming in on lorries
and the undocumented migrants on the labour market,
under-cutting local workers.
Featuring stories on immigration, exposing illegal immigration
would result in increased sales.
It was a Murdoch favourite.
So, what Maz actually wanted was to round up
as many undocumented migrants as he could.
And hand them over.
I said, well yeah, it could be done.
At that time, Punjabi undocumented migrants were desperate to get work.
Because that’s why they’d come here.
To earn money to send back home and make a better life for their families.
So, myself and Maz went to a house,
a multiple occupation house,
where I knew undocumented migrants were living.
I am from the Punjab and that’s one of the reasons why Maz called me.
I said there’s somebody I want to introduce you to.
And Maz would then go into his spiel.
This is your lucky day. I’m going to change your life.
The story was that he was recruiting labour
to work on a very big building operation.
So Maz said I will pay top dollar,
I’ll pay more than anybody else.
And if they’re undocumented, I prefer,
because they’ll do as they’re told.
Maz told them, on the Saturday,
we’re going to take you to the construction site,
and then we’re going to measure you up, and issue you
with your safety boots, safety hat and your high-vis jacket.
And I have to say, look, he is a good actor.
He made it convincing.
The day of the sting.
At the beginning, there were dribs and drabs
and Maz was a bit disappointed
because he thought we were only gonna get a handful.
But as the minutes passed, more and more came.
And you could see the look in his eyes,
the look of satisfaction that, you know, it had worked.
They sought my reassurance, "This is all kosher, isn’t it?"
I said yeah, yeah mate, we’re going to take you to see where the site is,
get your boots, get your helmets, that’s it.
They fell for it, hook, line and sinker without much questioning.
[bus engine roars]
[ominous music]
It was quiet. Deathly quiet.
You could see in them they wanted the money,
but they were a little bit unsure what the hell’s going on here.
We turn off the main road.
They’d been delivered on a plate to Colnbrook detention centre.
Looks like the entrance to any prison.
By now, people knew what was going on.
The atmosphere had turned to one of rage and hate
and fear.
Now, Colnbrook is not expecting this,
they don’t know what the hell’s going on.
If we were turned away, I was gonna leg it, I was gonna run.
Maz threatens them.
If you’re not going to take them, he was going to put it in the paper
that the Home Office didn't want to know.
And that’s when it hit me.
Normally, you can justify your actions,
by saying the guy’s a villain or the guy’s corrupt
or the guy’s causing misery to other people.
But the thing that distinguishes this story from the others,
is that these guys weren't villains.
They were not hurting anybody.
They were here merely trying to improve their condition.
I was involved in ruining people’s lives
all for a newspaper story.
I shouldn't have done it. I should have said no to him.
It was like lambs being led to slaughter.
You would think that having parents who were immigrants themselves,
he would have had more sympathy for their plight.
But no, he had no empathy for his victims at all.
We got this story.
That’s it, job done for us.
[ominous music]
Maz liked to work on stories that were guaranteed
either a double page or a front-page splash.
This story only made a mini spread
towards the middle of the paper.
So, he was disappointed because it wasn’t a splash
and it wouldn’t have come to the attention of Rupert Murdoch.
And he really thought that he was going to be promoted.
It wasn’t to be.
He would always be an outsider.
Now, some people look down their noses at the tabloids
and think to themselves, look at those nasty stories.
It is true that people's lives can be ruined,
but no one’s exposed by the tabloids for good behaviour.
The immigration bus story was a brilliant piece
of tabloid investigation.
He looked at a real problem,
he found a way to illustrate it,
and it was in the public interest.
[phone rings]
At that moment, he was no longer the avenging angel,
the fighter for justice that I first thought he was.
[continues ringing]
I decided not to be involved any further.
[phone stops ringing]
I got out.
But Maz wouldn’t stop.
His circle became smaller.
Maz didn't trust a lot of people.
He did trust me, I was part of his life,
but the loyalty was very important.
One day, Maz got a tip.
The Pakistani cricket team was involved in some match fixing.
Normally I don’t say anything, I don’t get involved,
but there was one Pakistani cricketer, Mohammad Amir,
who had just turned 18.
I had asked Maz, I said, you know, why don't you just leave him out?
Because he's 18.
Think about it, I mean kids at that age, I knew, they do stupid things.
And he said, it doesn't matter.
If you do the crime, you’ll do the time, basically.
[ominous music]
Mohammad, do you think you’re going to be jailed today?
Do you want to go to jail?
[Zee] After that, there was a distance.
I could tell that he was upset that I’d questioned him.
There was no doubt that Maz, particularly as he got ever more successful,
became more difficult to manage.
He didn’t really like to be questioned,
he would just go for the story.
It was consuming him almost.
You know, when you’re with someone and everything is good,
obviously you just think, forever.
He took me to the airport the next day and in the airport he said,
call me, let me know when you land.
I said OK.
And then, that was it.
It was over. Never heard from him again.
[suspenseful music]
[Zee] I spent five years with Maz.
I think I did know the real Maz.
Or I knew what he showed me.
I think in a way,
the journalism became everything.
He kind of lost track of the whole world
and it just became whatever Maz was doing.
But the big stories kept on coming
and his Pakistani cricket scoop made Maz a multi-award winner.
He was the unanimous choice in a high-quality field.
Congratulations then to Mazher Mahmood
from the News of the World.
As you know, Mazher does not reveal himself,
so who’s coming on stage for him?
I was amongst the judges who gave Mazher the Reporter of the Year
and also the Scoop of the Year award for the Pakistani cricket exposé.
He is absolutely one of the finest, most professional journalists
I’ve had the pleasure and the privilege to work with. Thank you.
I had no hesitation in feeling that he deserved that
despite, if you like, the skeletons in the Mazher cupboard.
[Paul Samrai] He was the man.
Envy, admiration in equal measures.
Scoop of the Year. Reporter of the Year.
He believed in his hype.
[Neil Wallis] For 20 years, Mazher and the News of the World
were a perfect marriage.
But none of us expected it to end like it did.
None of us.
[reporter] A number of celebrities are taking legal action
against the News of the World over allegations of phone hacking.
The Metropolitan Police have asked the paper for more information
about the tactics of its reporters.
[tense music fades]
[intense music]