A former New York art gallery owner once dubbed London’s ‘most dangerous’ woman’ is facing years in jail for stalking the former British ambassador to Belarus.
Farah Damji, 58, unleashed a ‘reprehensible’ campaign of harassment on Nigel Gould-Davies after meeting him on the dating app Bumble in July 2023.
The former diplomat, 59, wept in court as he described how Damhi set about destroying his character within a month of meeting her.
Damji sent ‘defamatory’ emails about Mr Gould-Davies copying in colleagues at Harvard University and New York Times editorial staff.
She also stole a legally privileged document concerning Russia from Mr Gould-Davies’ London home and threatened to post them online.
Mr Gould-Davies is the former British ambassador to Belarus and currently a fellow with the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
He is also an associate fellow of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs and an expert on Russia.
Mr Gould-Davies said he supported Damji after she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer but the stalker set out to ruin his life.
Damji, who had articles published in the Independent and the New Statesmen, has convictions for fraud, theft, perverting the course of justice and three separate stalking charges.
Farah Damji, 58, unleashed a ‘reprehensible’ campaign of harassment on Nigel Gould-Davies after meeting him on the dating app Bumble in July 2023
Damji sent ‘defamatory’ emails about Mr Gould-Davies copying in colleagues at Harvard University and New York Times editorial staff.
The daughter of the late South-Africa-born property magnate Amir Damji, was jailed for 15 months in 2010 for a £17,500 housing benefit fraud.
Damji was locked up for five years in 2016 for stalking a church warden after they met on an online dating site.
She attended his son’s school and spoke with the deputy headmaster ‘to make false allegations about the warden abusing vulnerable women.’
Damji then continued to stalk the church warden, and sent emails to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Deputy Metropolitan Police Commissioner and an MP following her arrest.
She was convicted of stalking involving serious alarm and distress, theft and two counts of fraud by false representation by a jury at Wood Green Crown Court today.
Damji denied stalking Mr Gould-Davies and claimed the host of aliases she created were all real people and blamed them for harassing the diplomat.
Judge Joanna Greenberg remanded Damji in custody ahead of sentence on July 11.
During the four week trial Mr Gould-Davies was heard sobbing quietly behind a curtain as he told jurors he was a ‘senior fellow for Russian and Eurasia at The International Institute for Strategic Studies – a think-tank.’
Mr Gould-Davies said he met Damji on Bumble and knew her by the name ‘Noor Higham’.
He helped her set up a cafe called ‘The View’ on Caledonian Road, Islington, recording podcasts, helping move furniture and even ‘serving customers there as well’.
Mr Gould-Davies said he began to receive ‘abusive and wounding and hurtful’ emails from Damji within a month of meeting her.
He added they were ‘very vitriolic and very nasty’ and ‘really just attempts to destroy my character’.
The former Associate Fellow at Chatham House said he was sent ‘around 100’ emails from the defendant using the aliases Holly Bright and Claire Simms.
One email sent by Holly Bright told him: ‘I’ve got photographs of a woman you bruised’.
Mr Gould-Davies said he tried to reason with the ‘chorus of attackers’ via email and text.
‘I frequently replied to Holly and Claire by both text and by email, particularly when they vilified me and abused me, to try and sort of understand why they were doing that and to reason with them and say ‘no, what you’re saying isn’t true’.
Damji (pictured) convicted of stalking involving serious alarm and distress, theft and two counts of fraud by false representation by a jury at Wood Green Crown Court today.
Events escalated when ‘Holly Bright’ contacted the head of HR at his workplace accusing the Harvard educated journalist of ‘preying on vulnerable woman’.
Mr Gould-Davies told the court she also sent emails to his local Labour MP Emily Thornberry.
‘I realised that Noor was very nice to me when I was doing what she wanted, and if there was any kind of even small disagreement she would often sort of explode or suddenly turn on me.
‘Suddenly I would get a message from Claire Simms or Holly Bright vilifying and laying into me.’
He said Damji made up ‘elaborate stories’ to put distance between herself and the aliases she is said to have created.
‘On one occasion Noor said, “Oh Holly opened up my phone when I was in the shower”, and on another occasion – it was a very elaborate story – she said “Oh Holly hacked into my computer and left spyware there”’.
Mr Gould-Davies said he had been asked to provide an ‘expert view’ on a civil dispute relating to an aircraft impounded in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.
‘The key point is I was being asked to provide an expert view for the companies that were trying to get compensated by Russia, so this is something that the Russian state didn’t like or didn’t want.
‘I was working with sensitive, legally privileged documents relating to the case and I had one of them printed out in my flat.
‘Noor took it and sent me a photo from her WhatsApp showing that she’d taken it and threatening to put it on the internet.’
Mr Gould-Davies was asked about a ‘spoof’ Twitter account allegedly set up by Damji with a bio including the words: ‘failed spook, ex-ambassador, fumbling academic, mentally unstable Russian expert’.
He said he had to write to his line manager to explain the existence of the ‘disgusting Twitter account’.
‘If (people) saw something from this account without finding out what the account was, then they would – its perfectly possible it seems to me – have thought this was from me.’
Mr Gould-Davies told jurors that Noor did not ‘deny’ setting up the X account before later claiming it was Holly Bright’s doing.
Fighting back to tears Mr Gould-Davies told jurors: ‘Like a fool, I accepted it.’
‘I suppose I wanted to believe she hadn’t created it’, he said.
He told jurors he felt he had an ‘obligation to look after her’ owing to her breast cancer diagnosis.
Judge Joanna Greenberg remanded Damji in custody ahead of sentence on July 11 following the trial at Wood Green Crown Court (stock image)
Mr Gould-Davies then wept again as he detailed the ‘suffering’ he suffered at Damji’s hands.
‘I have to be a big pillow constantly punched and punched and I just have to absorb it beause she needs me’, he said.
Mr Gould-Davies only found out her name was Farah Damji when he made enquiries after the relationship ended about the identity of a person who created a fake website in this name with the hosting platform ‘GoDaddy’.
Damji had set up ‘The View’ by convincing a wide range of suppliers to give her help and free goods as a community interest company, including the use of premises rent free.
Christiaan Moll, prosecuting, said The View linked her ‘to a number of false emails and social accounts which we say are part of the evidence in this case.’
Damji sent another email to the Ambassador of Kazakhastan in November 2023, referring to him as a ‘severally dysfunctional cretin’, said Mr Moll.
‘The result was for Mr Gould-Davies very frightening and disorientating, especially when these emails made serious defamatory statements and baseless claims that he physically abused women.’
She even created a spoof Twitter account in the name ‘John Halligan’ to mock Mr Gould-Davies.
He eventually flew to Berlin ‘to seek temporary refuge’ in early 2024.
‘The defendant was keen to ascertain his whereabouts and he continued to receive messages and phone calls.’
Mr Gould-Davies received one email stating: ‘I have people searching for you, we are everywhere, and Holly is in Berlin.’
The prosecutor added: ‘Social media evidence (also) suggests at the end of February 2024 Damji visited a town in southern Spain where Mr Gould-Davies’ mother lives.’
Jurors were played doorbell camera footage showing a woman sent by Damji to the former diplomat’s home when he was staying was in Berlin.
‘There is evidence that the defendant committed credit card fraud against the defendant in mid-December 2023, when one of his credit cards and indeed his passport disappeared without explanation, forcing him to cancel plans to visit his mother in Spain and instead spend Christmas with Noor,’ said Mr Moll.
Mr Gould-Davies’ credit card bill showed unexplained transactions totalling £13,621 including several to a company called ‘Flowers for Freedom’.
‘The Twitter and Etsy accounts for these companies have the defendant’s picture on them,’ the prosecutor said.
Damji was eventually arrested on her way to Berlin at Heathrow airport and she was interviewed several times by police on March 12, 2024.
She first came to public prominence after she admitted having a kinky affair with Guardian columnist William Dalrymple.
Damji also had a high profile affair with a senior executive at The Guardian.
While serving her five year jail sentence imposed in 2016 the stalker, also known as Farah Dan, raised £5,000 asking for donations on Twitter to hire a top QC to appeal the conviction.
She published ‘character assassinations’ online of individuals she was prohibited from referencing.
She then penned a letter to a government body accusing the investigating officer in that case of ‘stalking and harassing her’.
Damji had complained that a police officer had ‘scared’ her elderly mother by contacting her without permission in a message sent to Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA).
In 2020 she was convicted of two counts of breaching the restraining order in April 2018 and June 2018.
But Damji fled to Ireland during her trial and she was jailed in her absence for 27 months after a judge described her as ‘extremely manipulative’.
She was finally re-arrested in County Galway in August 2022 and returned to Britain to serve her sentence.
Damji, of Doughty Street, Clerkenwell, denied stalking involving serious alarm and distress, theft and two counts of fraud by false representation.
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