Scotland Yard has been accused of “intimidating” a young Muslim rape victim after she complained that she had been attacked by the central witness in their case against the former Met commander Ali Dizaei.
Leaked police documents show how the victim, 21, was asked to produce evidence of her income to satisfy officers she had not been bribed to make the claims.
The attorney general Dominic Grieve has been asked to set up an independent inquiry into the case. Peter Herbert, chairman of the Society of Black Lawyers, said he wanted Grieve to discover why guidelines on the interview of rape victims appear not to have been followed.
“It is unheard of that the victim of a rape is treated as a suspect, and inquiries made as to whether she was making the allegation for financial gain in the absence of any cogent evidence to suggest her story was false.
“I think it is extremely serious because it might look to her as if it was designed to put her off. Whatever the motive is, rape is rape. It was clearly a fishing expedition by the Met. Any objective observer would see this as intimidation.”
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The case is highly sensitive because it relates to the prosecution of Dizaei, one of its most senior Muslim police officers.
He has been a thorn in the Met’s side for over a decade. Its first prosecution led to him being cleared in 2003. He received a reported £80,000 in compensation after it emerged his phone had been illegally tapped. The then commissioner Sir Ian Blair, the Met was forced to make a public apology to Dizaei, 48.
A second prosecution last year, for misconduct and perverting the course of justice after a row outside a London restaurant, led to Dizaei being convicted and sentenced to four years. But his conviction was overturned six weeks ago after the Court of Appeal ruled it was unsafe. Lord Justice Hughes ruled that the key witness against Dizaei, Waad al-Baghdadi, had lied to the jury at Dizaei’s trial and that he had falsified documents in order to deceive the immigration authorities. The judge ordered a retrial and al-Baghdadi is now also facing benefit-fraud charges.
It has now emerged that the Met had other damaging evidence against al-Baghdadi, which, according to lawyers, was not disclosed to Dizaei’s defence team until months later. This weekend, the Met said it had not received a complaint about its role in the case. It added: “The rape investigation was handled independently to any other matter. It adhered to Metropolitan police service procedures and followed the advice of a prosecutor regarding conflicting evidence.”
The Crown Prosecution Service said that asking rape victims whether they had received financial gain for making rape allegations was not consistent with its guidelines. Al-Baghdadi could not be contacted.