A former Scotland Yard superintendent has backed calls for the Metropolitan Police chief to resign over his criticism of pro-Palestine protests.
Nusrit Mehtab – who was one of the UK’s top female, ethnic minority police officers – told Declassified that Sir Mark Rowley is “blurring the lines of operational policing and political positioning”.
Her comments follow a series of controversial interventions from Rowley, including his recent claim that organisers of the Palestine demonstrations tried to deliberately direct protesters past synagogues. “Their initial suggestion for their route, their march, has involved walking by a synagogue,” he told The Times . “The fact that features as the organisers’ intent, I think that sends a message… that feels like antisemitism.”
The Palestine Coalition, a UK-based alliance which includes Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop The War Coalition, has condemned the comments as “incomprehensible and defamatory,” and demanded that Rowley retract them. Speaking to Declassified this week, Mehtab said that Rowley was “repeatedly signalling out one protest” while saying nothing about others, like the far-right ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally led by Tommy Robinson. This weekend will see both the annual pro-Palestine Nakba Day march and one of Robinson’s rallies in central London with more than 4,000 Met police expected to be deployed.
She said: “The perception can be – based on that rhetoric – that is he aligning himself to the right-wing? Or is it possible that he’s carving himself a political career?”
Mehtab added: “This is all about moving away from blurring the lines of operational policing and political positioning, because then the perception is that safety and security is only there for one community, when actually safety and security should be the domain of all communities.”
Accusations of racism
After joining the Metropolitan Police in the late 1980s, Mehtab rose through the ranks to become a superintendent. Her career included a stint in the force’s counter-terrorism unit while it was led by Rowley.
But she quit in 2020, accusing the Met Police of racism and sexism.
Rowley has repeatedly refused to accept that the force is “institutionally racist”, claiming the word institutional was “ambiguous”. But Mehtab said she had personally experienced racism and sexism within the counter-terror unit when he was in charge of it.
“If he can’t even admit institutional racism and can’t address the very issues that are blatantly in front of him, how can he then – in terms of being fair and impartial – take that and police communities impartially?”
Mehtab also criticised Rowley’s political intervention following the Golders Green stabbings last month. Essa Suleiman, 45, has since been charged over the stabbing of two Jewish men and one Muslim man. Following the incident, Rowley publicly condemned the Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, for retweeting criticism of police officers who arrested the suspect.
The tweeted message accused the officers of “repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head when he was already incapacitated by Taser”.
With just a week before local elections, Rowley responded with an unprecedented attack on Polanski, accusing him of amplifying “inaccurate and misinformed commentary” and of being an “armchair critic”. But Mehtab told Declassified : “Officer safety doesn’t teach you to kick somebody in the head.”
She added: “Zack Polanski was absolutely right to question that.”
Asked whether Rowley should resign, she said: “It’s for him to think about whether his position is still tenable… But I think that the people that have asked for him to resign were right to do so.”
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