TULISA: I’M GLAD ‘SHEIKH’ WAS JAILED

TULISA’S FAKE SHEIKH JOY

TULISA Contostavlos says the jailing of “Fake Sheikh” Mazher Mahmood is “karma”.

The pop babe hit out after the undercover reporter was sent down for 15 months.

Shamed Mahmood, 53, was locked up for tampering with evidence to frame her at a drugs trial.

Tulisa said: “That’s it. It’s done a full circle, what goes around comes around, it couldn’t ever be more relevant. Karma.”

She added: “If you were to go back in time and someone was to say to me three years ago, ‘Mazher Mahmood will be facing the same amount of time in jail that you were, he’s going to be the one in the firing line and the press are going to destroy his reputation and do what he did to you’, it’s bizarre. It really is.”

Mahmood was convicted of conspiring to pervert the course of justice earlier this month and jailed on Friday.

He was found guilty of conspiring to suppress evidence at Tulisa’s drugs trial, after his newspaper set-up led to her being accused of arranging an £800 cocaine deal.

Lawyers say that since his conviction, 18 claims worth up to £800million have been launched against him.

Former X Factor judge Tulisa, 28, said caging the selfproclaimed King of the Sting was the only way to stop him.

Speaking in an updated version of her documentary The Price of Fame, Tulisa added: “I don’t think without these serious consequences he would have ever stopped.

“I don’t think I could ever fully let it go, part of me would have felt that injustice.

“But now there’s nothing for me to hold on to.”

Mahmood, of Purley, south London, posed as a film producer when he met the former N-Dubz singer at a hotel in 2013. He is said to have promised her a film role alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.

It was part of a sting that saw her accused of arranging a drugs deal.

But the case was thrown out when it emerged Mahmood’s driver Alan Smith had changed his original police statement to omit comments she allegedly made expressing disapproval of hard drugs.

Sentencing him at the Old Bailey, the judge told Mahmood: “You were the intended beneficiary and you made use of a loyal person in order to achieve your purpose.

“You wanted another scalp and Miss Contostavlos’ conviction would have achieved that.” As he was sent down a man, thought to be someone exposed by Mahmood, yelled: “Your turn now, Mazher!”

The Price of Fame is on BBC One tonight at 11.30pm.