Manchester Airport case jurors urged to ‘not be distracted' by officer's actions

Independent

a day ago

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 July 23 last year was shared on social media and went viral.
Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, is on trial at Liverpool Crown Court accused of assaulting three police officers and a member of public before he was felled by a Taser strike.
Greater Manchester Police officers Pc Zachary Marsden, Pc Lydia Ward and Pc Ellie Cook entered the Terminal 2 car park paystation after reports that a male fitting Amaaz's description had headbutted a member of the public inside the airport minutes earlier.
The Crown says Amaaz resisted and his brother, Muhammad Amaad, 26, intervened as a 'high level of violence' was inflicted on the officers.
In his closing speech to the jury on Thursday, 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.
'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.
'We invite you to focus on the violence used by the defendants and not be distracted by what happened afterwards. That's what it is, a distraction and an example of an effort to try to complicate what is a simple case.'
He said the claims by 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 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 Amaaz from the paystation 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?'
Both defendants, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, deny the allegations and say they were lawfully acting in self defence or in defence of each other.
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.
Amaad is alleged to have assaulted Pc Marsden, causing actual bodily harm.