Gwen Shlam's Blog: Phone hacking: Ali Dizaei told he may have been target

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Phone hacking: Ali Dizaei told he may have been target

Former police chief whose conviction for corruption was quashed says he will sue News of the World if his phone was hacked

Ali Dizaei, the controversial former senior Scotland Yard officer whose conviction for corruption was quashed earlier this month, has been told by Metropolitan police detectives that he could have been a victim of phone hacking by the News of the World.

Dizaei was sacked from the force after he was found guilty of corruption and served nearly a year in prison, but his conviction was quashed a fortnight ago and he was released pending a retrial. He has said he wants to rejoin the Met.

It is understood that Dizaei will sue the paper's publisher, News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers, if it can be shown his phone was hacked. If so he would becoming the latest of more than two dozen public figures to do so.

Scotland Yard is currently investigating the full extent of phone hacking at the paper after reopening its inquiry at the start of the year.

Detectives are in the process of contacting everyone whose name and contact details are listed in the pages of notebooks seized in 2006 in a raid on the home of Glenn Mulcaire, the former private investigator who was working for the News of the World at the time.

Dizaei said he was "shocked and appalled" after detectives told him his police phone may have been hacked.

He said the phone that may have been targeted was used for police business, according to a BBC report.

The relationship between the police and the News of the World has come under intense scrutiny in recent months after it emerged that some of the Met's most senior officers have regularly met senior executives at the paper, sometimes socially.

An apparent admission by former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, who told MPs in 2003 the paper had paid police officers for information in the past, has also been placed under the spotlight once more as part of an investigation by the Commons home affairs select committee into the legal ramifications of phone hacking.

Brooks, who is now chief executive of News International, the UK arm of Rupert Murdoch's newspaper business, wrote to the committee in March this year clarifying her 2003 comment. She said she had been "responding to a specific line of questioning on how newspapers get information".

She added: "If, in doing so, I gave the impression that I had knowledge of any specific cases, I can assure you that this was not my intention."

The home affairs select committee is expected to publish its report on phone hacking early next month.

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James Robinson

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