Probably Not the Last Word

So, Met Commander (previously a Thames Valley Police Chief Inspector) Ali Dizaei is finally convicted of something (in this case, 'perverting the course of justice' and 'misconduct in a public office'). It is almost certainly not the last we will hear of this, never mind that of his 4 year sentence (2 inside and 2 on licence, according to the judge's direction), he'll probably be out (even in the unlikely event that he doesn't appeal) for Valentines Day 2011.

A trained barrister¹, with a PhD² and in the "oh shit, we've no senior ethnics" reaction that most of the civil and uniformed services had in the 80s & 90s (as a reaction to their almost completely white male management structures - yes, institutional racism, just like the rest of society back then), he was probably a shoe-in for (reasonably) high rank. Now, I've never met the guy, so I have no idea whether he is the ignorant, bullying clown with dubious social connections portrayed in many of the comments on the police blogs and in some of the trial reports or whether, after so much investigation, the IPCC and CPS have merely demonstrated Richleau's maxim:

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

It has to be said that "misconduct in public office" and "perverting the course of justice" are scarcely rare amongst the ruling class of Blairs' Britain - witness MPs expenses, John Prescott, the endless and scandalous BAE saga and John Prescott. And I've never done any investigation where I haven't found something that could be considered dubious (even where there was no evidence that the suspects or their acquaintances were even loosely connected to the original alleged issue.)

But, regardless, a couple of things concern me:

• Was this just the "entitlement culture" of the modern dictatorship, unbound by the endless 'getting away with it' (for any definition of 'it') that all of the previous investigations, the not-guilty verdicts and the compensation would have given anybody bar a saint, or did the man start out as a fraud (it must be admitted that he clearly started out as an effective self-publicist)?
• Why is a Met Police Commander - a Royal Appointment and one of the most senior ranks in the British Police services - allowed to hold dual nationality and, let's be honest about it, dual nationality in a state that has repeatedly demonstrated its armed hostility to Britain and its interests?

Update: And, yes, as I suggested might just happen, we have an appeal against his "completely outrageous" conviction as a result of the vendetta the world has against him. Would he just get out of the JCB?

1. Yes, legally qualified - but some of the news reports have this 'trained barrister' in. He joined the police at 24 - PhD by then is quick but not unusual; cramming in another year 'taking dinners' is moving quickly. Did he then complete his pupillage? If so, which chambers?

2. On 'police racism', "The Thin Black Line" - according to the Daily Hate, which also implies he took it much later (completion shortly before joining the Met), as opposed to the Telegraph's timeline - "He was privately educated at Slindon College in Sussex, trained as a barrister and took a PhD before joining Thames Valley Police in 1986." Obviously, if he did his PhD part-time or sabbatical from the cop-shop, it makes the timings in note 1 more reasonable.