Policewoman Punched at Manchester Airport Calls Attacker a Coward

A police officer who was left bleeding and in tears with a broken nose after an attempted arrest at Manchester Airport descended into violence has described her attacker as a “coward”.

Lydia Ward spoke out as Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, a 21-year-old university dropout, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. She said he had shown “not one ounce” of remorse after treating her “as a punch bag”.

In a striking victim impact statement delivered directly to Amaaz, the officer, who has since been promoted to sergeant, told him plainly: “You changed my face.”

Sgt Ward also condemned Amaaz for, in her words, “playing the victim” after misleading footage filmed by bystanders in the aftermath of the incident spread widely online, saying he had “allowed the public to feel sorry for you”.

She further revealed the personal strain the case had placed on her, saying she had been forced to bring her newborn baby with her when giving evidence, and telling Amaaz that a courtroom was “no place for a baby”.

Urging him to “take a good look at me” and see the 5ft 2in, 8st woman behind the uniform, Sgt Ward described the lasting physical and psychological impact of what she said was a shocking and unprovoked assault.

“I want you to know I am not weak,” Sgt Ward told Amaaz.

“No matter how this has affected me or impacted on my life I will not allow you to see me as weak.”

‘You used me as a punch bag, but I will get back up and I will show you how strong I am.’

The second policewoman he battered, PC Ellie Cook, meanwhile told of how she has been left ‘broken’ and her dreams of one day becoming a close protection officer are on hold.

In a case which sparked accusations of police racism and claims of two-tier justice, Amaaz and his brother Muhammad Amaad, 26, battled police officers beside a car park pay station at Manchester Airport’s Terminal Two in July 2024.

The incident erupted after Amaaz headbutted a Kuwaiti holidaymaker he had accused of racially abusing his mother Shameem Akhtar, whom they had met from an incoming flight from Pakistan via Qatar.

Sgt Ward – then a constable – and two armed colleagues caught up with then-19-year-old Amaaz as the group were paying for parking and they took hold of him from either side ahead of an attempt to arrest him.

Instead, Amaaz fought back before both brothers – from Rochdale – began throwing punches at the officers.

The teenager smashed Sgt Ward in the face, sending her sprawling to the ground, before repeatedly hitting PC Cook.

His brother Amaad meanwhile overpowered PC Zachary Marsden and began raining punches down before Amaaz joined in.

The brothers were finally both arrested after PC Cook fired her 50,000 volt Taser at Amaaz, who fell to the floor.

Amid the confusion, PC Marsden kicked the teenager in the face and aimed a stamp close by.

Footage of the kick was filmed by onlookers and went viral when it went online, with protesters taking to the streets holding ‘Black Lives Matter’ placards and calling for the police to be ‘defunded’.

But there was a fierce backlash after leaked CCTV footage showed the violence PC Marsden and his two female colleagues had been subjected to just seconds earlier.

To widespread public fury, it took 150 days for prosecutors to announce that PC Marsden would not be charged with any offence. 

Instead the brothers were charged with assaulting the three officers. 

The delay was down to needing to wait for overlapping investigations by police and the IOPC, the Crown Prosecution Service has stressed. 

A trial last year saw horrifying bodycam footage of the brutal violence meted out by Amaaz, throwing a total of ten punches in the melee.

But while Amaaz was convicted of causing actual bodily harm to Sgt Ward and assaulting PC Cook, as well as assaulting the passenger, jurors could not reach verdicts on whether either brother had assaulted PC Marsden.

In court they insisted that they were acting in self-defence or the defence of one another. 

Amaaz also denied knowing the two officers he punched in the face were female, saying he had ‘nothing but love and respect for women’.

Last month a new jury at Liverpool Crown Court once again failed to reach verdicts on whether either had assaulted PC Marsden, with prosecutors controversially saying later that they would not be seeking a second retrial.

This week Greater Manchester’s ‘anti-woke’ Chief Constable Sir Stephen Watson said he wanted anyone who assaulted his officers to be prosecuted to the ‘fullest extent of the law’ – but declined to criticise the decision.

However detectives are understood to have been in favour of a third trial, the Manchester Evening News reported.

Today Amaaz – who has been in custody on remand since being found guilty of attacking the policewomen – appeared by videolink from prison as he was sentenced.

Jailing him for 42 months and saying all the assaults had been ‘unprovoked’, Judge Neil Flewitt accused Amaaz of showing ‘a total lack of remorse’.

He told Amaaz he had instead ‘sought to blame others for what was clearly your responsibility’ and ‘portray yourself as a victim’.

The judge said the policewomen had ‘posed no threat to you or your brother’, adding that he was satisfied Amaaz knew both Sgt Ward and PC Cook were female and police officers when he punched them. 

Due to her small stature, Sgt Ward was ‘clearly no match for a strong young man’, he added. 

Earlier Imran Khan KC, representing Amaaz, had urged the judge to be ‘cautious about making assumptions’ that ‘Asian men are violent’ or have ‘no prospects’ when he determined the sentence. 

But Judge Flewitt told Amaaz he could ‘rest assured’ that the sentence he was imposing was ‘uninfluenced’ by his ethnic background. 

Amaaz displayed no sign of emotion as he was jailed. 

Earlier, delivering a powerful victim impact statement herself, Sgt Ward revealed the trauma of having to bring her baby to court when she gave evidence in the retrial as she was still breastfeeding him.

Dressed in black trousers and a black and white sleeveless top, she spoke calmly but powerfully about how she still ‘struggles to make sense of it all’.

Expressionless Amaaz – pictured on a TV screen and wearing a stripy T-shirt – looked straight ahead as Sgt Ward spelt out ‘how you made me feel and how you have changed who I am forever’.

‘Before I begin, I want you to take a good look at me,’ she said. ‘Take away that I am a police officer. Look at me, standing here. What do you see?

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‘I’ll tell you what you see. You see a female. A female who is 5ft 2in and at the time of the incident I weighed no more than 8st.

‘You are a male and you chose to attack me without a second thought.

‘You chose to attack a female. You knocked me to the ground with one punch, with so much force you broke my nose.’

Sgt Ward challenged him: ‘How would you feel if it was your mother standing here today explaining how she was violently assaulted by a male?

‘What you did was cowardly.’

Sgt Ward said she joined the police eight years ago ‘because I wanted to help people’ and ‘took pride’ in her work.

She added that while ‘conflict and violence’ were part of being in uniform, normally there are ‘indications that a situation is escalating’.

‘The day you attacked us was different,’ she 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.’

The officer told Amaaz she remembered him looking ‘directly into my eyes’ before throwing the punch.

‘Could you see how scared I was? I was petrified. I just remember hitting the floor and thinking, “This is it.” I felt instant pain and then I saw the blood,’ Sgt Ward said. 

‘I have never seen anyone so violent. I have never been so scared. It was utterly terrifying.’

Sgt Ward said she was ‘angered’ by how Amaaz initially ‘played the victim’ when ‘only part of the footage was out in the public’.

‘You are not a victim,’ she said. ‘I am the one who was injured, not you. You had the whole world listening to you and you showed no remorse. Not one ounce.

‘You allowed the public to feel sorry for you. You made out like we had done something wrong when all we were doing was our job.’

Sgt Ward said she needed an operation to fix her nose and still has a scar and a lump on her brow.

‘I look at myself now and I can see the difference in my face compared to how it was before this happened.

‘You did that to me. You changed my face. What was it that I did that was so wrong you felt you needed to attack me?

‘I fear for the women in your life. If you can do that to a female police officer, what are you capable of to the women you know?’

She also spoke of the ‘stress’ of having to attend court to give evidence during the first trial last year a month before being due to give birth.

Then the prospect of a retrial meant her ordeal was ‘hanging over me’ when she was meant to be enjoying bonding with her baby, even having to bring the infant to court with her.

‘I shouldn’t have had to bring my baby to court,’ she told Amaaz. ‘It is no place for a baby.’

Finally she told him: ‘You deserve no more of my time.’

In PC Cook’s victim impact statement – read out by prosecutor Paul Greaney KC – she told Amaaz how her life that day ‘changed forever’.

Having joined the police in 2018, she was ‘loving’ her new role as a firearms officer but her ‘dream’ was to one day join the Met Police as a close protection officer.

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

PC Cook said being called out to arrest a suspect over a headbutting ‘sounded like a routine job’, adding: ‘How wrong I was.

‘I remember feeling punches in quick succession and with such power behind them that I thought I was being attacked by three to four people.

‘I was terrified. The pain was excruciating with each blow, my vision went black, and I was so disorientated.’

Recalling how she managed to deploy her Taser despite her injuries, she asked Amaaz: ‘What would you have done if I hadn’t?’

In the weeks that followed, PC Cook said she ‘threw myself back into work’.

‘I thought I was fine, but I wasn’t,’ she added.

Seven months later she was signed off work with trauma, saying she still feels ‘trapped’ in the events of that day. As a result she has given up being a firearms officer, meaning her career aspirations are ‘on hold’.

‘It hurts and upsets me that you chose to spin the narrative the way you did,’ she said to Amaaz. ‘All you needed to do was to say you had made a massive mistake, own it.

‘But instead, you chose to put us all at risk, even yourselves. Each of our faces were plastered all over national news. Everyone knew who we were. I had to move out of my home, a home where I felt safe and secure. For what? For doing my job?’

She told Amaaz: ‘I hope the words I have read today stay with you for the rest of your life. I hope you have flashbacks of what I am saying the way I have flashbacks of that day.

‘I hope you never forget, because I know I won’t.’

After reading out her statement, Mr Greaney said it was the prosecution case that Amaaz threw a second punch at Sgt Ward which only failed to connect as she had been knocked to the floor by the first one.

Amaaz ‘punched with full force a woman who was smaller and slighter than him’, he added.

The assault on PC Cook involved ‘substantial force’ and was ‘persistent’, he submitted.

In mitigation, Mr Khan cited positive character references about his ‘caring’ nature, arguing that Amaaz was ‘somebody who seeks to right wrongs’, he submitted.

Headbutting Abdulkareem Ismaeil because his mother had accused the air passenger of racially abusing her on her incoming flight was ‘typical’ of his ‘caring nature’, he claimed.

Similarly his actions in punching the two policewomen were motivated by ‘an instinct to protect his brother,’ he added.

Amaaz was ‘a young man who put others before himself,’ Mr Khan said.

The barrister argued that the initial actions of the officers at the pay station were ‘unlawful’ and that Amaaz’s punches constituted ‘excessive self-defence’.

However this account was rejected by Judge Flewitt who said the assaults were ‘unprovoked’. 

The public gallery was packed with supporters of Amaaz, including his brother and former co-accused Amaad.

After the sentencing, GMP chief constable Sir Stephen said: ‘This incident began after a man was headbutted in a public place in front of his family. 

‘Our officers were responding quickly to precisely the sort of outrageous criminal behaviour that rightly offends the public. 

‘In undertaking their duties, officers were met with resistance and violence; followed by online vilification, condemnation and adverse commentary from those who did not have the full facts.

‘It is vital that officers get the respect and support they deserve for routinely putting themselves in harm’s way to protect the public. 

‘Assaults on police officers are sadly all too common – 35 of my officers are assaulted every week across Greater Manchester – and such incidents can never be justified.’

Last month prosecutors announced they would not be seeking a second retrial after two juries had deliberated for almost 30 hours, with a grinning Amaad walking free from court to cheers and applause.

Earlier Mr Greaney KC said after consideration ‘at the highest level’ the CPS had decided it could not ‘lawfully’ seek a third trial of either brother.

Afterwards the brothers’ lawyer accused PC Marsden of ‘taking a “rugby style” kick’ at Amaaz’s head and called for him to be placed on trial.

Aamer Anwar also claimed the brothers had been ‘subjected to an orgy of race hate’ online since being charged, alleging social media had contributed to a ‘lynch mob mentality’.

Neither of the brothers had been in trouble with the police before, and six members of the family – including older brother Abid – are current or former officers with Greater Manchester Police.

PC Marsden remains under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) which could still refer him back to the Crown Prosecution Service for potential charges.

A second male Greater Manchester Police officer who along with PC Marsden confronted bystanders filming the brawl also remains under investigation.

The same officer is also understood to have been placed under criminal investigation by the IOPC over the leaking of CCTV footage of the altercation to the Manchester Evening News.