Manchester Airport trial jurors told stamp and kick a ‘distraction’

Jurors have been urged by prosecutors to “not be distracted” by the kick and stamp of a police officer during a fracas at Manchester Airport.

Mobile phone footage of the incident on 23 July last year was shared on social media and went viral.

Muhammad Amaad, 26, and Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, are on trial accused of assaulting PC Zachary Marsden, PC Lydia Ward and PC Ellie Cook after they tried to arrest the younger brother.

The officers went to arrest Mr Amaaz after reports that a male fitting his description had headbutted a member of the public inside the airport minutes earlier.

Prosecutors said Mr Amaaz resisted police and his brother, Muhammad Amaad, 26, intervened as a “high level of violence” was inflicted on the officers.

Both defendants, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, deny the allegations and say they were lawfully acting in self defence or in defence of each other.

Mr Amaaz is alleged to have assaulted PC Marsden and PC Ward, causing them actual bodily harm.

He is also accused of the assault of emergency worker PC Cook, and the earlier assault by beating of a member of the public, Abdulkareem Ismaeil, at a Starbucks cafe in T2 arrivals.

Mr Amaad is alleged to have assaulted PC Marsden, causing actual bodily harm.

In his closing speech to the jury earlier, prosecutor Paul Greaney KC said it was “simple logic and common sense” that what happened subsequently was “irrelevant as to why the defendants used the force they did”.

He said: “We don’t shy away from that kick and stamp by PC Marsden. However, what does that kick, what does that stamp have to do with your task?

“The defence suggest, at least as we understood it, that the kick and stamp and other aspects of the aftermath reveal that the officers were out of control from start to finish.”

Mr Greaney said: “We suggest from all of what you have seen and all of what you have heard from these three professional officers when they gave evidence is that you can be sure that the suggestion that they were out of control is false and wrong.”

The jury was asked by the prosecutor to “focus on the violence used by the defendants and not be distracted by what happened afterwards”.

He said: “That’s what it is, a distraction and an example of an effort to try to complicate what is a simple case.”

Mr Greaney said the claims by Mr Amaaz that he did not realise that PC Ward and PC Cook were women when he struck them was a “barefaced lie”.

PC Ward suffered a broken nose as she was floored by a punch to the face and PC Cook was also knocked to the ground by a number of elbows and punches, the court has heard.

Mr Greaney told jurors: “Of course we know you will make fair allowance for the fast-moving and dynamic events but the suggestion he didn’t know they were women cannot exist in the world we inhabit.”

Mr Greaney said Mr Amaad had “no legitimate reason to seek to prevent the officers from carrying out their duty particularly in the circumstances where it must have been obvious his brother was resisting arrest”.

His claims that he thought his brother was being choked by PC Marsden was “demonstrably untrue”, said the prosecutor.

Mr Greaney said the officers were doing what the law entitled them to do in their plan to seek to move Mr Amaaz from the pay station area and then tell him outside he was under arrest.

He said: “What was going through their minds is we have a duty to perform and we are going to perform it.

“Conversely, what was going through the mind of the first defendant, Amaaz, was that he plainly knew that the people taking hold of him were police officers. He had just attacked a man in public in an international airport.

“What he did think they were there for?”

In his closing submission, Imran Khan KC, defending Mr Amaaz, said the incident may not have happened and “gone viral” but for PC Marsden.

He said: “PC Marsden’s decision-making has put his colleagues in danger. It has caused all this to happen. It could have been avoided.

“One might think that the easiest thing to have done would have been to say ‘excuse me sir, would you mind stepping outside so I can have a word with you’.

“What would be wrong with that? This was not the crime of the century.

“They all three of them grab hold of parts of his body without announcing themselves, that’s crazy.

“This deliberate intentional plan led to unlawful force being applied. This is a group of officers led by PC Marsden that flouts every procedure, every rule, every law.

“Fahir was terrified for his life. That’s how this started.”

Mr Khan said PC Marsden’s conduct after Mr Amaaz was felled by a Taser strike was relevant.

He said: “When it comes to the kick and stamp we say that is typical of his behaviour from the beginning.

“When Fahir is on the floor almost motionless having been tasered, he is not a threat.

“PC Marsden sought to justify the unjustifiable.

“He kicked Fahir in the head with what you may feel was a rugby-style kick. He said it was a light kick. In what world can this be said to be a light kick?”

Mr Khan told jurors it was “plain as the nose on my face” that PC Marsden also pushed his Taser into the face of the defendants’ mother, rather than the officer’s belief that Mr Amaad accidentally struck her.

He said: “To suggest her own son did it is plumbing the depths.

“It is very clear. This is PC Marsden out of control. That’s how she got her injury. She was not a threat.”

The trial continues on Friday.