‘He’s a liar, a cheat and a coward,’ says police chief Tarique Ghaffur’s first wife

This is more than a simple ex-wife slandering her ex story. Her comments were very reserved and carefully thought out they are also blunt. As the UK’s highest-ranking muslim officer (one btw, who likes to toss out the race card) he should expect close scrutiny. You can bet we will be watching.

Is Tarique what he seems; a fast tracking, seemingly competent and loyal officer or a scoundrel? Read and decide for yourselves.

By Richard Pendlebury and Stephen Wright, 04 July, 2008, The daily Mail
Tarique Ghaffur: His first wife talks about her disastrous marriage to the man who has risen to become Britain’s highest-ranking Asian officer.

The quietly spoken Asian woman smiles inquiringly from behind the counter of an urban sub-post office. But the welcome flickers and dies when the name Tarique Ghaffur is uttered. Her eyes dart. ‘Please keep your voice down and come into the back room,’ she says. ‘I don’t want my customers to know.’

Who is this woman? She does not want her new surname nor location disclosed ‘as only my second husband and close family know that I was once married to the famous Tarique Ghaffur.’

Her story, never before told, is of a disastrous marriage to a rising Asian star in British policing. It culminated in her dialing 999 to summon her husband’s colleagues to evict his family from the marital home and his subsequent, furious threat: ‘I will teach those pigs a lesson one day.’

That was more than 20 years ago. And now Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur, risen to become Britain’s highest ranking Asian officer, is launching a racial discrimination case against his employers – the Metropolitan Police.

His action has provoked both consternation and deep depression on the executive 8th floor of New Scotland Yard.

In what seems to be a carefully orchestrated attack, Ghaffur’s threat coincides with the industrial tribunal of another high-ranking Asian officer, Commander Shabir Hussain, who claims to have been passed over for further promotion by the Met Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair. Hussain accuses Sir Ian of surrounding himself with a ‘golden circle’ of white officers.

Deliberate leaks suggest that Ghaffur, whose contract runs out next year, will also accuse his weak and isolated boss of being actively racist. The same sources say that the one-time Ugandan refugee has a dossier of incidents, culminating in him being removed from a prestigious Olympics security job.
Outraged at the smear, the almost pathologically politically correct Sir Ian wants to remove Ghaffur from his desk, but has been blocked from doing so. Mediation, due to start next week, will surely fail. Sources say there is now no chance of Ghaffur getting a contract extension.

Indeed, the Home Office view is that Ghaffur, 53, had been promoted as far as his capabilities allow – if not further. It is not racism that holds him back, but ability.

One person who knows his character extremely well is this middle-aged sub-post-mistress, the first Mrs Ghaffur.

Another Asian Muslim immigrant from east Africa, she has not been able to follow every twist and turn of Ghaffur’s recent career as her working hours are long and the memories painful. But she does know that the man to whom she was once married has risen to become a very important policeman indeed.
This week, as one media report said Ghaffur and his second wife have also grown apart and that he was ‘close’ to another woman, the first Mrs Ghaffur broke her silence. She described a complex, ambitious man, caught between two cultures, who treated her with utter disdain as he was propelled up the career ladder.

Of his race claims, she says: ‘He’s crazy. Unfortunately, when you are young, you don’t see people for what they really are.

‘Either he was good enough to be promoted or he wasn’t and I don’t think he was. I think he has benefited from positive discrimination.’

She adds, damningly; ‘That’s what I can’t understand about the way Tarique is behaving. He owes an eternal debt of gratitude to Britain for allowing him to come here, to save him from persecution, and tolerating his race and religion.

‘Yet this is how he repays such kindness. You cannot take all the opportunities that have been given to you, all the promotions, and then not accept that one day perhaps you will not rise any further.
‘To turn round just because things aren’t going your way and accuse someone of racial discrimination, which is such a dreadful allegation, is cowardly and lazy.’

A teenage Ghaffur arrived in Britain with his family in 1972. They were among the many thousands of Asians ejected from Uganda by dictator Idi Amin. His parents could speak only Punjabi. Tarique joined the Greater Manchester force in 1974, one of only two officers from an ethnic minority among 6,000 on the force at that time.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair has made a statement in light of allegations made by Ghaffur
By the time he met his first wife, a 23-year-old bank clerk, who had been born in Kenya where her father worked for the police, he was going places. The pair were formally ‘ introduced’ by a respected friend of her father. Marriage was clearly the goal.

‘Tarique was good looking, had a good job and seemed charming. That’s not a bad combination for a prospective fiance,’ she says.

‘At the end of the day, the permission was between his parents and mine. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was an arranged marriage in the sense that I was coerced. But I was under pressure to become engaged to marry because that was what nice girls of my age did.’

They married in March 1984 at the register office in Enfield, north London, where her family lived. What Mrs Ghaffur did not know was that her new husband was already having an affair with one of his female subordinates in the Greater Manchester Police. And he had no intention of giving up his mistress.

Mrs Ghaffur recalls: ‘I was expected to be a traditional wife, dressed in a sari, staying at home. It was one rule for him and another for me.

‘I was never allowed out. He would go out to the pub, he didn’t bother with prayers and, within six weeks of us marrying, I discovered he had a mistress. She knocked on the door and told me.’
That mistress was WPC Doreen Mellor, who had accompanied Ghaffur on a six-week policing tour of India. Mrs Ghuffar said: ‘I heard a knock on the door and went to open it. This woman was stood there and she calmly told me she was Tarique’s girlfriend. I was so shocked I just shut the door and sobbed.
‘The first person I saw afterwards was Tarique’s father. He wasn’t surprised because he knew his son was seeing this woman, yet he encouraged him to get married to me. That is cruel.

‘Tarique later told me he never wanted to get married, he did it only because his father threatened to kill himself.’

The cracks widened. Then came the startling incident which is still so fresh in her mind today. Ghaffur, a keen squash player, injured his back on court, but rather than stay at the Stretford marital home with his increasingly estranged wife, he moved into a police house to recuperate.

Mrs Ghaffur says that her in-laws then decided to take the law into their own hands: ‘They were worried that if we divorced and I was the only one living in the house then Tarique would forfeit any right to it.

‘I had been at work in the bank and came home to find Ghaffur’s father, mother and three brothers had broken in through a back door. They had moved their belongings into the spare room and were even preparing something to eat in the kitchen.

‘They told me they weren’t going to let me stay in the house and that I had to get out. I think they thought I would just pack my bags and return to my family in London.’

She adds: ‘Tarique may have paid the mortgage, but the deeds were in our joint names and I paid for all the bills and food. I was entitled to something, even though our marriage had meant nothing to him.
‘I had no option but to call the police. Tarique was an inspector so the officer who came had to be of a higher rank. I thought they dealt with it well. They escorted them out and didn’t arrest them. But Tarique wasn’t happy when he found out what had happened.’

That is an understatement. According to his ex-wife, he bellowed his desire for revenge, describing the colleagues who had attended as ‘pigs’.

‘It has haunted me, the fact that he could have such contempt for the people he worked with,’ she says.

‘I would not allow my own son to speak in such a way. He has been brought up to respect the police, to realise they do a great job in the most difficult of circumstances. If he called them pigs he would feel my hand.

‘When I read of Tarique’s legal case, his desire for revenge came back to me. Maybe now Tarique is teaching them that lesson.’

Mrs Ghaffur obtained a court order barring her husband’s family from her home. She also made a formal complaint about her husband’s affair to Greater Manchester Police and within a year had divorced him on the grounds of his adultery.

Nothing came of her complaint, she believes. ‘I think that was because he was an Asian police officer. They didn’t want any fuss.’

The couple divorced in 1987 and Ghaffur eventually married another Asian woman called Shehla, with whom he has two teenage children. Shehla remains at home in Manchester while he has a flat in London during the working week.

With wife Shehla after collecting a CBE for services to the police at Buckingham Palace, November 2004.

The first Mrs Ghaffur says that even though it was not her fault, the divorce ‘stigmatised’ her within the Asian community.

But eventually she met and married a financial analyst, with whom she has two children and is now very happy. ‘My job is hard work but there is nothing better than being able to help someone like an old lady sort out her pension. They are so grateful.’

Mrs Ghaffur is still baffled by the attitude of her former husband. How can a man be charged with the responsibility of maintaining law and order, upholding all that is right and good in a society, when his own personal life is such a disaster. Tarique lied, cheated and deceived me in the worst ways possible.
‘He was obsessed with money and rank for their own sakes, so how can we charge him with bringing qualities such as respect and honour to bear in his job?’

Clearly, the former Mrs Ghaffur’s views are influenced by their marriage – there are others who knew Ghaffur during his time in Manchester who say he was a very good senior policeman.

Paul Kelly, former chairman of the Greater Manchester Police Federation, worked closely with Ghaffur as he rose through the ranks.

The ex-sergeant, who retired last year, said: ‘I was a constable under his command in Moss Side in the mid-Eighties, and then a sergeant reporting to him in Longsight in the late Eighties.

‘Tarique was a street cop who was well respected by the men and women under his command. He would be out there on the front line when something kicked off. He was a hands- on copper who liked to lead from the front.’

But one other, salient point is clear in Mr Kelly’s mind. ‘I never witnessed any sort of bigotry towards him, either to his face or behind his back,’ he said. ‘It was no surprise to me when he was appointed Assistant Commissioner in the Met.

‘Tarique was unambiguously honest that he wanted to reach the higher echelons of policing.’

So a good cop, liked by those who served with him on the streets. But also acutely aware that, allied to his obvious ability, his ethnicity could be a help rather than a hindrance.

At least one former Manchester colleague recalls Ghaffur admitting when he was made inspector: ‘I’m the right colour at the right time.’

This view is backed up by his ex-wife, who says: ‘The police wanted Asians in the force and those who joined were being pushed onwards and upwards.

‘I don’t think there was any doubt that Tarique benefited from having the right colour of skin, in the right place at the right time. Fast tracking is what I would call it.’

Ghaffur speaking at a Homeland and Border security conference, Westminster. His first wife says he was the right colour at the right time.

In 1988, he was promoted to chief inspector. The following year, he was promoted again, to the rank of superintendent and transferred to the Leicestershire force. While there, he was sent on a three-month secondment to the FBI in America. This was not the CV of a man being held back. He became Assistant Chief Constable of Lancashire, before joining the Met as a Deputy Assistant Commissioner in 1999, rising to his current rank two years later.

Then he hit a promotional ceiling. In 2002, Mr Ghaffur was put in charge of the Met’s Specialist Crime Directorate but failed in bids to become Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester, West Midlands and West Yorkshire forces.

A spokeswoman for the Greater Manchester Police Authority defended its rejection of Ghaffur’s application to become chief constable : ‘The process was applied equally for every person who went for the Chief Constable position, as it is for anyone applying for any vacancy.

‘The appointment of Michael Todd [the late Chief Constable] was a unanimous decision by the appointment panel. He was obviously the best candidate at that time.’ The Home Office view, we can reveal, is that Ghaffur has hardly sparkled in his role overseeing security preparations for the 2012 London Olympics.

His £180,000 salary, CBE and Queen’s Police Medal are a considerable consolation, never mind a rank which most officers of any colour or creed would envy.

But the failure to rise further rankles. And he has become increasingly caught up in the race politics which have dogged the Met’s executive level.

It culminated in last month’s extraordinary suggestion that members of the Metropolitan Police Authority were racist for not rubber stamping more promotions for him.

A good many at the Yard detect the guiding hand of his old friend, Commander Ali Dizaei, the Iranianborn president of the National Black Police Association and longtime nemesis of Sir Ian Blair.
Ghaffur believed that he would be made Sir Ian’s deputy when Blair got the top job in 2005. But that possibility was probably scuppered when Ghaffur, to the complete surprise of his superiors, appeared as an Old Bailey defence witness for Dizaei, who had been charged with fraud and perverting the course of justice. Dizaei was cleared and is now seen as ‘untouchable’.

Nobody can honestly deny that racism hasn’t been a problem in British policing.

But even friends are astounded at Ghaffur’s action. Having come to the UK as a teenage refugee, he has risen to become the third most powerful policeman in the country, and yet he is now saying: ‘I am a victim of the system.’

One disappointed admirer who recently worked for him at the Met recalls: ‘Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur was an admirable boss and was great with his staff.

‘But I feel that his goal was to reach “the top”, and, not having secured the top job, he’s now playing the race card rather than accept that he has reached the level of his capabilities. I think he feels that he has lost face and would rather blame the system.

‘I never saw any evidence of racism against him.’

The word at the Yard is that Tarique Ghaffur is finished. For reasons best known to himself, at the end of what was by any standards a brilliant career, he has picked a fight with the very service which has done so much for him.

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