Manchester Airport case 'not complicated'

Jurors at a trial of two men accused of attacking an armed police officer at Manchester Airport have been advised they can "see with their own eyes" what happened by observing CCTV and body-worn camera footage of the incident.

Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 21, and his elder brother, Muhammad Amaad, 26, from Rochdale, deny assaulting PC Zachary Marsden at the car park pay-station in terminal 2 on 23 July 2024.

On Monday, Liverpool Crown Court heard "violence erupted" after officers tried to arrest Amaaz following an earlier episode at a Starbucks.

Paul Greaney KC, opening the prosecution, told the jury it was "not a complicated case" and claimed the brothers had inflicted a "high level of violence".

The court heard the men had gone to collect their mother from the airport on her return from Pakistan, and had learned something had happened on the flight with a man called Abdulkareem Ismaeil that had upset her.

The brothers later confronted Ismaeil at a Starbucks coffee shop in the airport, before Amaaz headbutted and punched him.

Amaaz was convicted of assaulting Ismaeil at a separate trial last year.

The jury was played CCTV footage and shown photographs of the attack.

"What occurred is plain to see", asserted Greaney, for the prosecution.

He told jurors, Ismaeil, who was with his family, was backed against a counter, "cornered and outnumbered" before Amaaz attacked him.

Two armed police, PC Marsden and PC Ellie Cook, were called to the terminal after the incident, alongside an unarmed officer, PC Lydia Ward.

The officers attempted to arrest Amaaz while he was at a pay station in the terminal's car park area, but he resisted and his brother stepped in, Greaney said.

Violence "erupted" with the prosecutor alleging Amaaz had delivered 12 blows in the space of thirty seconds, breaking PC Ward's nose and injuring the two other officers, the court heard.

Jurors were shown police body-cam footage of the attack, in which Amaaz was eventually restrained with a stun gun.

PC Marsden was then shown apparently kicking Amaaz in the head, and bringing his foot down in "what looks like a stamping motion", Greaney said.

He told the jury: "Those actions look rather shocking in the cold light of day.

"But we suggest they need to be judged in the context of the very serious level of threat posed by the defendants to an officer who was concerned that his firearm might be taken from him at an international airport."

The prosecutor said the men will claim they attacked in self-defence, but they inflicted a "high level of violence" and were acting "offensively".

Jurors were told they had to consider whether Amaaz was guilty of causing actual bodily harm in his attack on PC Marsden, and whether Amaad took part in that assault.

Amaaz was convicted of assaulting PC Ward and PC Cook in the separate trial last year.

The trial continues.

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