Dizaei, 49, will never wear a police uniform again following his conviction at a re-trial for misconduct and perverting the course of justice, the same charges he was convicted of in his first trial.
He received a three-year prison sentence at London’s Southwark Crown Court, which will be reduced by the 15 months he has already spent behind bars.
Dizaei was first convicted of framing fellow Iranian Waad al-Baghdadi in a street row in 2010—but he walked out of prison a year later after the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction when it was found Baghdadi had a long record of lying before his testimony at the Dizaei trial.
Passing sentence Monday, Justice Saunders said: “You are a very senior officer. The breach of trust that the public has placed in you is the more serious because of your senior appointment. You have been a role model to many other people as a result of your achievements as a police officer.”
Iranian-born Dizaei, 49, was originally jailed for four years after being convicted of the same offences in February 2010. So, he did manage to shave a year off his sentence with his re-trial.
Justice Saunders said he took into account the time that Dizaei spent on bail awaiting his second trial in passing a shorter sentence. Dizaei is expected to serve half of his sentence, meaning he is likely to be freed from jail within three months.
Dizaei’s lawyer, Stephen Riordan QC, said Dizaei’s time in prison was “extremely difficult” because of his job as a high-profile police officer.
He told the court that Dizaei was assaulted and admitted to a hospital twice while serving his original sentence. Justice Saunders said he also took that into account in passing a shorter sentence.
The judge said a hearing would be held at a later date to decide how much the policeman should pay toward the costs of the prosecution and his defense team.
Despite new evidence about Baghdadi’s immigration status—he claimed to be Iraqi to get refugee status but is actually Iranian—the jury of four women and eight men was not swayed by Dizaei’s denials of wrongdoing.
After a month-long trial, they unanimously found he attacked Baghdadi before arresting him and then attempted to frame him.
Over the years, Dizaei had previously emerged unscathed from a series of inquiries, including a multimillion-pound undercover operation examining claims of corruption, fraud, dishonesty, use of prostitutes and even spying for Iran.
But the attempt to frame a man who pestered him for payment over a website portrayed him as a violent bully and liar who abused his position.
The immediate issue before the jury was a chance meeting Dizaei and Baghdadi had in the Persian Yas restaurant July 18, 2008.
Baghdadi approached Dizaei and asked for £600 ($900) he said he was owed for building a website showcasing Dizaei’s 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 Baghdadi was roughly arrested and handcuffed.
In one of two 999 calls (the British version of 911), Dizaei asked an operator for “urgent assistance” before starting to arrest Baghdadi. When officers arrived, Dizaei handed them the metal mouthpiece of a shisha pipe, on Baghdadi’s key ring, and claimed Baghdadi had stabbed him with it.
But a police doctor concluded that two red marks on the officer’s torso were probably self-inflicted and did not match the pipe.
Born in Tehran in 1962, Dizaei was brought up in a family steeped in policing with a father who headed the Tehran traffic police and a grandfather he said had been the Number Two officer in the Tehran police.
Dizaei said police work was his destiny and joined the Thames Valley Police after attending a private high school and City University Law School.
He moved to the Metropolitan Police, as London’s police force is formally named, in 1999 and progressed through the ranks, reaching the high rank of commander.
Dizaei stood without making any reaction as the jury foreman read out the guilty verdicts.
Gaon Hart, from the Crown Prosecution Service’s special crime and counter-terrorism division, said after the hearing: “Dizaei’s corruption, which would be deplorable in any police officer, was all the more so given his position as a highly ranked commander.
“The public entrust the police with considerable powers and with that comes considerable responsibility. Dizaei abused that power and ignored that responsibility.”
Deborah Glass, deputy chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, added: “There is no room in the police for corrupt officers, and today’s verdict underlines that.”
A small group of Dizaei’s supporters mounted a protest as Glass left the court building, heckling her and giving her a slow handclap.
