Scotland Yard launched a campaign of harassment against the National Black Police Association as part of its attempt to discredit one of its most senior officers, a new book claims today.

Officers seized a vanload of NBPA files from the Home Office without a search warrent. They then hired accountants to examine the expenses of its senior members.

The book also claims that the NBPA was so concerned that it was being bugged by the Yard that top members took a room at a Hilton hotel under the alias of “Mr and Mrs Brown” for a secret meeting.

The allegations are made in Not One of Us, the autobiography of Ali Dizaei, an Iranian-born Muslim. He was an outspoken critic of police racism who was targeted in a botched multi-million pound corruption investigation.

The book, serialised inThe Times, today also claims that:

- Supporters of Mr Dizaei were falsely briefed that he was a suspect in a 14-year-old rape investigation.

- Ken Livingstone’s police and race adviser believed he was being spied on by the Yard.

- The now chief constable of Devon and Cornwall objected to Mr Dizaei wearing a Black Police Association tie pin and drinking out of a BPA mug.

Mr Dizaei writes scathingly of the 44-strong investigation, which included intense surveillance, sting operations and attempts to recruit undercover Iranian officers from Australia and New Zealand. The investigation and prosecution, he says, cost more than £7 million. The police say it cost £2.2 million.

In the book, to be published later this month, Mr Dizael also claims that Britain’s top Asian policeman, Tariq Ghaffur, an Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, believed that Mr Dizaei was the victim of a “personal vendetta”.

The book will be a blow to the Metropolitan Police which is struggling to recruit black and Asian officers. It also comes in a week in which MPs were told that police forces will take 17 years to achieve a workforce that mirrors local communities. There are about 600,000 Muslims living in the Met area but only 268 Muslim police officers.

Mr Dizaei, still a senior police officer, was awarded £60,000 after he was cleared at the Old Bailey of perverting the course of justice and misconduct in a public office.

He had been the target of a series of investigations which started in 1999 and included allegations involving corruption, drug use, prostitutes and spying for Iran. He was suspended from the force in 2001 but the allegations all collapsed and in the aftermath of his acquittal in 2003 he wrote his book.

Among the most serious allegations Mr Dizaei makes is that national black police leaders were targeted by investigators after they called for the resignation of Sir Ian Blair in May 2001, then number two at the Yard and now commissioner.

One officer, Leroy Logan, a former chairman of the association and now a superintendant, was accused of fiddling £80 for a hotel bill. The case was eventually dropped and the Yard were forced to give him £100,000 and an apology.

Mr Dizaei, who was a senior member of the association and its legal adviser, says that fear of the Yard’s power reached even Lee Jasper, the police and race adviser to Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London.

Mr Jasper was so afraid that his office was being bugged that he would not talk to police supporters of Mr Dizaei. Instead he gave them a note of what he had been told by Superintendent Barry Norman, the senior investigator of the investigation code-named Operation Helios.

This stated that Mr Dizaei was linked to a “14-year-old rape assault”. Mr Dizaei later found out that the allegation had been made “opportunistically” by someone who had been questioned about him but had been dismissed by detectives as beneath investigation.

Mr Dizaei say when he was suspended he was given a “friend”, a colleague, to support him. The officer, Superintendent Russell, sounded very sympathetic but later it emerged he had been part of the undercover operation against him.

Mr Dizaei, who was eventually reinstated and now commands police in Hounslow, West London, says the drive to pin something against him even included asking his old force Thames Valley police whether he had been linked to the disappearence of a rubber stamp 20 years earlier.

The Yard spent millions including setting up two undercover officers in a £100,000 a year flat with a bonus of £100 a day and another £150 in expenses. There was even a special HQ in Kent code-named “Miami” while Mr Dizaei was “Mozart”.

The decision to charge him was taken after a summit and workshops at a Windsor hotel including senior officers, Yard press officers and independent advisors. Yet the advisers did not know that a series of stings attempted to test his integrity had showed he was honest.

Last night the Yard said in a statement: “It is not our intention to comment on Superintendent Dizaei’s personal recollection and interpretation of specific events. We regret he chose to publish the book.”

Interview with Ali Dizaei

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