Rochdale man sentenced for assault on police officers and customer at Manchester airport | Manchester
A man found guilty of assaulting two female police officers and a member of the public at a Starbucks at Manchester airport has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.
Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 21, from Rochdale, was found guilty of common assault and two counts of causing actual bodily harm following a four-week trial at Liverpool crown court last year.
Cell phone footage of the brawl that took place in July 2024 was widely shared on social media following the incident. In the photo, a young Asian man was seen kicking his face by a male police officer and then hitting his head on the ground.
Days later, a CCTV clip leaked to the media showed an altercation beforehand with three police officers suffering injuries including a concussion, broken nose, bruising and swelling.
Footage shown to the jury showed Amaaz headbutting a member of the public and punching officers, including PC Lydia Ward and PC Ellie Cook, with 10 punches, two elbows and a kick.
He and his co-defendant brother Muhammad Amaad, 26, of Rochdale, had claimed they had acted in self-defence or in defense of each other against male police officer PC Zachary Marsden.
Two juries failed to reach a verdict on the charges relating to PC Marsden and the Crown Prosecution Service announced last month there would be no third trial against the brothers.
In a victim impact statement, Ward said Amaaz “knocked me to the ground with one punch, with such force that he broke my nose” and described what he did as “cowardly”.
“What makes me angry is that you then play the victim when only some of the footage is public,” he said.
When he and his colleague were attacked, Ward said: “We were caught completely off guard and I felt like it came out of nowhere.”
“Never in a million years did I think he would attack me like this,” he said. “I’m still so confused about this. It keeps replaying in my mind.”
The woman, who told the court that she gave birth last year, said, “The anxiety of returning to court weighed on me for most of my maternity leave.”
“I wasn’t able to enjoy this experience properly,” he added. “I will never get this time back.”
Cook said he was “traumatized” by the attack, while he was “horrified” and in “excruciating” pain.
“There was such power behind Amaaz’s punches that I thought I was being attacked by three to four people,” he said.
Said he was “waking up”[n] “He woke up happy that morning” because “he had recently started a new job as a firearms officer at the airport and I loved it.” In his statement read to the court, he said he accepted the job as a stepping stone to a position as a close protection officer in the Metropolitan Police.
When he woke up that day, he said: “I could never have imagined what would happen to me.”
“I don’t think he will ever begin to understand what he did to me or my family,” he added. “I used to be happy. I used to be determined. I used to be focused. Now I’m broken.”
Cook said he was “very angry and frustrated about what happened,” adding: “It hurts and saddens me that you chose to twist the narrative in this way.”
In his statement, he said that “everyone was talking about it, I couldn’t escape” and that he had to leave “the house where I felt safe and secure”.
Cook said he was laid off last year due to trauma from the job.
“It pains me to say this, but because of what you did to me, I have decided to stop being a firearms officer,” he said.
“This means my dream of becoming a close protection officer has been postponed and I may have to face the fact that it may not happen.”
