Jemima: I’m so scared of ‘stalker’ I have to move house
Taxi driver bombarded her with 1,000 calls and 200 texts
AN obsessed taxi driver bombarded Jemima Khan with more than 1,000 phone calls, leaving her so scared she is moving house, a court heard.
Hassan Mahhmood told the heiress he ‘loved her’ and hounded her with 203 texts – including messages saying he would come to her home.
Miss Khan, 43, told the court she was left ‘frightened about what he would do’ as he became ‘increasingly unstable’.
The journalist and campaigner, the daughter of late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, booked a ride home in Mahhmood’s taxi through an app called Hailo – which meant he received her telephone number and address.
After he picked Miss Khan and friends up from a jazz club in June last year, she agreed to take a ‘selfie’ with him. Days later Mahhmood, 27, began a year-long campaign of harassment, using different mobile numbers to send hundreds of messages, make 1,182 phone calls and send ‘loads of’ messages on WhatsApp.
Miss Khan repeatedly blocked his number – but he changed it 18 times. On one occasion he texted her 23 times in one day. She did not go to police for several months out of fear he would ‘ take revenge’ if he lost his job or was arrested, the court heard.
Prosecutor Ruxana Nasser said the defendant told Miss Khan that he ‘ loved her’, ‘wanted to know her’ and asked her ‘why he could not be friends with her’.
In a victim-impact statement, Miss Khan, whose brother is MP Zac Goldsmith, said: ‘The incident has made me incredibly anxious at times. I would be home alone and he would call me several times and text repeatedly late at night. Sometimes he would send texts saying he would come to my house. That really frightened me. I feel extremely vulnerableplanning woman.to and moveAs scareda house.’ resultas a singleI’m
Mahhmood, from Waltham Forest, north- east London, pleaded guilty to a charge of harassment without violence between June 16 last year and July 18 this year. He denied a more serious charge of stalking the campaigner, which was allowed to lie on file. His baryou, rister Umar Ali told Isleworth Crown Court the taxi driver was a ‘big fan’ of Miss Khan because of her marriage to his hero, Pakistan cricketer Imran Khan, which lasted nine years and ended in divorce in 2004. On July 3 this year, Miss Khan replied to a message and wrote: ‘This is harassment.
‘I have asked you multiple times to stop contacting me. If you don’t stop I am warning
we will call the police.’ But on July 17, he told her: ‘Hi you alright, I miss you, shall I come and see you today?’ Mr Ali said Mahhmood’s marriage broke down during the harassment campaign and his client has been stripped of his London black cab licence. Judge Martin Edmunds QC adjourned sentencing to October 26, warning Mahhmood that The – he abusingjudge could said: facehis position‘Hisjail. behaviouras a cab driver to obtain the telephone number of a client, then contacting her with enormous persistence and using multiple telephone numbers over the course of a year leads me to be deeply concerned over the level of obsessive behaviour.’
Mahhmood was yesterday handed a five-year restraining order. It is the second time this year Miss Khan has been through a harassment ordeal in court. In March, ‘obsessed’ Conor O’Mahony, 60, was given an indefinite restraining order.
‘I feel extremely vulnerable’