Abul Taher

Abul Taher, Security Correspondent for The Mail on Sunday, has been writing about the dangers of Islamist terrorism for many years, getting agenda-setting scoops through his impeccable contacts and unmatched expertise on the issue.

On October 7, as Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel and began their killing and kidnapping spree, bilingual Taher assessed the huge amounts of material flooding social media in both English and

Among the deluge of videos, he spotted the harrowing clip of Noa Argamani being led away by Hamas terrorists on a motorbike. After carefully watching and listening to it, Taher established that she screamed “don’t kill me” in English. The video and her haunting words made the iconic front page of the MoS, which has been viewed around the world on TV news channels and social media.

Our correspondents in Israel have since been told that Noa’s family thanked us for this front page, which summed up the terror the hostages felt, and the savagery Israel witnessed that day.

As the war in Gaza escalated in the ensuing weeks, the British public were appalled when the extremist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), held a protest in London where its members called for jihad against Israel.

Taher investigated the group, and through his brilliant security contacts, found out that its leader led a double-life as a family GP. Combining information gleaned from sensitive sources and traditional shoe leather journalism, Taher discovered the true identity of the GP, and finally tracked him down to his suburban surgery, where patients were unaware of his role as leader of HT.

Taher also led the MoS’s investigation into the escape of terror suspect Daniel Khalife from Wandsworth prison. He gleaned from his contacts how MI5, MI6 and GCHQ spies finally caught Khalife after bugging the phones of his relatives, ending one of the biggest manhunts in recent British history. Taher also revealed how Khalife’s arrest was the first big success of the Government’s new cutting-edge Counter-Terrorism Operations Centre, which cost nearly half-a-billion-pounds to build, and where MI5, MI6 and GCHQ spies sit alongside counter-terrorism police officers for the first time in UK history. Truly an expert in his field, Taher’s calm and forensic approach yields results again and again. When a big story on an issue affecting the national interest breaks on a Saturday afternoon, the one person you want in the newsroom is him.