Dizaei, 49, was convicted of assorted criminal offenses two years ago and sent off to prison for four years. But earlier this year, his conviction was overturned when his main accuser was found to have falsified much of his own background. An appeals court ordered a new trial for Dizaei, which is scheduled for early in the new year.
In the meantime, civil rights advocates pointed out that Dizaei now has a clean record and thus his firing as a felon from the London Metropolitan Police, often called Scotland Yard for the location of its headquarters, was invalid.
The police, therefore, were forced to reinstate Dizaei on the force. But, since he is under indictment, they then suspended him, albeit with full pay.
Dizaei immediately argued that other officers on the force who faced trials were allowed to remain on active duty.
Dizaei has a long and testy history with his superiors on the Metropolitan Police. He has been an officer of the black police organization and repeatedly accused the force of all sorts of bias against blacks. (In Britain, all non-Europeans are usually categorized as black.)
The force conducted a long and expensive misconduct investigation of Dizaei several years ago, but the whole effort blew up and was exposed as biased.
Then in 2008, Dizaei accused Waad al-Baghdadi of assaulting him in uniform and ordered the man’s arrest. The two had a long-running dispute over a payment that Baghdadi insisted he was due for designing a website for Dizaei.
But a tape from a surveillance camera indicated it was Dizaei who was roughing up Baghdadi and not the other way around. That led to Dizaei’s conviction for abuse of office.
Later, however, it was shown that Baghdadi had lied about much of his background. He was Iranian, not Iraqi, as claimed. The story he supplied for his asylum claim was shown to be false. Even the age he gave was not true. And there was evidence he had illegally collected welfare benefits in the name of his deceased father. That led to Dizaei’s conviction being vacated in May and a new trial ordered.
Dizaei’s exact salary is not known, but published reports said it is at least £90,000 ($140,000) a year.
Dizaei was born in Tehran and says his father was a high-ranking officer of the Tehran police.
