Rochdale man sentenced for assault on police officers and customer at Manchester airport

Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 21, convicted over 2024 incident of which footage was widely shared on social media

A man has been sentenced to three and a half years in jail after being convicted of assaulting two female police officers and a member of the public at a Starbucks in Manchester airport.

Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 21, from Rochdale, was convicted of common assault and two counts of actual bodily harm, after a four-week trial at Liverpool crown court last year.

Mobile phone footage of the brawl, which took place in July 2024, was shared widely on social media following the incident. It showed a young Asian man kicked in the face on the floor by a male police officer, who then appeared to stamp towards his head.

Days later, a CCTV clip, leaked to the media, showed an altercation beforehand with three police officers, who sustained injuries including concussion, a broken nose and bruising and swelling.

Footage played to the jury showed Amaaz head-butting a member of the public, and throwing 10 punches, two elbow strikes and one kick at the responding police officers, who included PC Lydia Ward and PC Ellie Cook.

He and his fellow defendant, his brother, Muhammad Amaad, 26, from Rochdale, had claimed they acted in lawful self-defence, or defence of each other, against the male police officer, PC Zachary Marsden.

Two juries could not make a decision on the charges relating to PC Marsden, and the Crown Prosecution Service last month said it would not seek a third trial against the brothers.

In her victim impact statement, Ward said Amaaz had “knocked me to the ground with one punch, with so much force you broke my nose”, describing what he did as “cowardly”.

“What angers me is that afterwards, when only part of the footage was out in the public, you played the victim,” she said.

When she and her colleague were attacked, Ward said, “we were totally blindsided, and I felt like it came from nowhere”.

“I never in a million years thought you would have attacked me the way you did,” she said. “I’m still so confused about it all. It replays in my mind constantly.”

She told the court she had given birth last year, and said that in “much of my maternity leave, I have had the worry of having to go back to court hanging over me”.

“I have been unable to enjoy the experience as I should have,” she added. “I’ll never get this time back.”

Cook said she was left “traumatised” by the attack, during which she was “terrified” and suffered “excruciating” pain. Amaaz’s punches, she said, had “such power behind them that I thought I was being attacked by three to four people”.

She said she had “woke[n] up that morning happy”, as she “had recently started a new role at the airport as a firearms officer, and I was loving it”. In a statement read to the court, she said she had taken the job as a stepping stone to a role in the Metropolitan police as a close protection officer.

When she woke up that day, she said, “I never could have imagined what was about to happen to me”.

“I don’t think you will ever begin to understand what you have done to me, or my family,” she added. “I used to be happy. I used to be driven. I used to be focused. I am now broken.”

Cook said she had been left feeling “so angry and frustrated with what happened”, adding: “It hurts and upsets me that you chose to spin the narrative the way you did.”

In her statement, she said “everyone was talking about it, and I couldn’t escape,” and she had to move out of “a home where I felt safe and secure”.

Cook said she had been signed off work last year with duty-related trauma. “It pains me to say this, but because of what you have done to me, I have decided to give up being a firearms officer,” she said. “This means my dream of becoming a close protection officer is on hold, and I may have to come to terms with the fact that it may not happen.”