Mazher Mahmood

Mazher Mahmood is an undercover reporter who worked for the defunct British tabloid newspaper News of the World.

News of the World claimed he has brought over 250 criminals to justice. He often poses as an Arab sheikh in order to gain his target's trust, and is also known as the Fake sheikh. In September 2008, he wrote a book entitled Confessions of a Fake Sheik – The King Of The Sting Reveals All published by Harper Collins.

Background

Mazher Mahmood has a British Pakistani background; he was born at 22 Floyer Road,Small_Heath,_Birmingham, on 22 March 1963, the second of two sons of Sultan and Shamim Mahmood, journalists who arrived from Pakistan three years earlier. Sultan Mahmood, did not set set up the first UK national newspaper to be published in Urdu as Mazher Mahmood has claimed on numerous occasions. 'Mashriq' (The East) was the first Urdu weekly newspaper launched in Britain on April 7th 1961, it was founded by respected Urdu writer and critic Mahmood Hashmi. Sultan Mahmood was employed as a columnist on Mashriq by Mahmood Hashmi. Copies of Mashriq are held in the British Library collection in London.

Mahmood's only face-to-face televised interview was with the BBC's Emily Maitlis, on the Andrew Marr Show in 2008, to...
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