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Two brothers assaulted police officers, leaving one with a broken nose, in a violent outburst as they resisted arrest over an earlier assault on a returning passenger at Manchester airport, a court has heard.
Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, and Muhammad Amaad, 26, are said to have struck out after police were called to respond to the earlier incident at a Starbucks cafe in the Terminal 2 building on 23 July last year.
Amaaz had head-butted and punched a member of a public in the cafe, Liverpool crown court heard.
Opening the prosecution case on Friday, Paul Greaney KC said officers who were already in the airport later traced the brothers to the terminal’s car park payment area.
PCs Zachary Marsden and Ellie Cook, who were armed, and PC Lydia Ward, who was unarmed, approached the defendants, he said.
“The officers attempted to move Mohammed Fahir Amaaz away from a payment machine in order to arrest him but he resisted and his brother Muhammad Amaad intervened. Both defendants assaulted PC Marsden,” Greaney said.
“In the moments that followed, the first defendant also assaulted PC Cook and then PC Ward too, breaking her nose. The defendants used a high level of violence.”
Amaaz is alleged to have assaulted Marsden and Ward, causing them actual bodily harm. He is also accused of the assault of Cook and the earlier assault of Abdulkareem Ismaeil at Starbucks.
Amaad, 26, is alleged to have assaulted Marsden causing actual bodily harm. Both men, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, deny the allegations.
Greaney said the defendants had travelled to the airport with their young nephew to collect their mother, who was due to arrive back on a flight from Qatar.
The prosecutor said: “A man named Abdulkareem Ismaeil was on the same flight as the defendants’ mother. He was travelling with his wife and three young children. It is clear that on the flight and/or shortly after it landed, something happened between the defendants’ mother and Abdulkareem Ismaeil that made the defendants’ mother unhappy.
“The defendants met their mother in the arrivals area of Terminal 2 and began to walk to the car park with her and the child that was with them. As they did so, they passed a Starbucks coffee house. Abdulkareem Ismaeil was in there with his wife and children. The defendants’ mother spotted Abdulkareem Ismaeil and pointed him out to her sons.
“At just after 8.20pm, the defendants entered Starbucks and confronted Abdulkareem Ismaeil. During that confrontation, Mohammed Fahir Amaaz delivered a headbutt to the face of Abdulkareem Ismaeil and punched him, then attempted to deliver other blows, all in front of a number of children. The prosecution case is that this was obviously unlawful conduct.”
Jurors were shown CCTV footage from the incident at Starbucks, lasting about a minute and 50 seconds.
Greaney told jurors that the prosecution’s position was this was “not a complicated case”. He said: “The events you are concerned with were captured by CCTV cameras and, in relation to the events in the payment area, on the body-worn cameras of police officers as well. So you will not have to depend only on the recollections of witnesses. You will also be able to see with your own eyes what happened.
“The two defendants assert, as we understand it, that at all stages they were acting in lawful self-defence or in defence of the other.”
