Met commander guilty of misconduct

Feb 8 2010

A top Scotland Yard officer has been found guilty of threatening and falsely arresting a man in a petty row over money.

Commander Ali Dizaei, 47, was convicted of misconduct and perverting the course of justice at London's Southwark Crown Court.

A jury found he attacked Iraqi Waad al-Baghdadi before arresting and attempting to frame him.

The corruption convictions will almost certainly spell the end of the Iranian officer's controversial 24-year career. Dizaei, who has been suspended on full pay since September 2008, is now likely to be sacked from the Metropolitan Police for gross misconduct.

He emerged unscathed from a series of earlier inquiries, including a multimillion-pound undercover operation examining claims of corruption, fraud and dishonesty. But an attempt to frame a young businessman who pestered him for payment over a website exposed him as a bully and a liar who abused his position.

The jury heard the two men met by chance in the Persian Yas restaurant, run by Dizaei's friend Sohrab Eshragi, in Hammersmith Road, west London, on July 18 2008. Mr al-Baghdadi, 24, approached Dizaei and asked for £600 he was owed for building a website showcasing his career, press interviews and speeches. This angered Dizaei, who had just eaten a meal with his wife after attending a ceremony at New Scotland Yard for new recruits.

The officer confronted the younger man in a nearby sidestreet where a scuffle took place and Mr al-Baghdadi was roughly arrested and handcuffed.

In one of two 999 calls Dizaei asked an operator for "urgent assistance" before starting to arrest Mr al-Baghdadi. When officers arrived, Dizaei handed them the metal mouthpiece of a shisha pipe, held on Mr al-Baghdadi's key ring, and claimed he had been stabbed with it. But a doctor at Hammersmith police station concluded that two red marks on the officer's torso were probably self-inflicted and did not match the pipe.

In his defence, Dizaei said he feared he was being targeted by his own colleagues because of his role as president of the National Black Police Association. Dizaei said he suspected he was being followed, that his phone was tapped and that he might be attacked.

But the jury rejected his claim that the way complaints against him were handled could lead to a "miscarriage of justice" and convicted him of both counts.