Manchester Airport-accused 'headbutted man in Starbucks'

One of two brothers accused of attack an armed police officer at Manchester Airport headbutted a man earlier in a Starbucks inside a terminal, a trial has heard.

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.

Jurors at Liverpool Crown Court were told the alleged assault against PC Marsden and an attack on two other officers came after an earlier incident at the coffee shop that followed an argument.

Witnesses told the court Amaaz was "the aggressor" who "caught the man off guard and made him stumble backwards" with the headbutt, before punching him.

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 involving a man called Abdulkareem Ismaeil, and that it had upset their mother.

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, and heard from two witnesses

"What occurred is plain to see", said Paul Greaney KC, for the prosecution, when the case was opened on Monday.

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.

Greaney told the jury they could "see with their own eyes" what had happened, and said it was "not a complicated case".

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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