At Manchester Airport in July last year, two female police officers were violently assaulted by 20-year-old Rochdale student Mohammed Fahir Amaaz. Both were struck to the ground, and one was left with a broken and profusely bleeding nose. They had tried to apprehend Amaaz, after he had assaulted a member of the public.
When news of the Manchester Airport brawl first emerged, there was widespread outrage – though not at Amaaz. For much of the media, the political class and the liberal commentariat, he was cast as the real victim.
This was because of a snippet of footage from the incident, which had gone viral. It showed Amaaz prostrate on the ground, before being kicked multiple times by police officer Zachary Marsden. The footage was indeed distressing. But it was clearly not the full picture and did not give any context.
Still, the vast majority of the left leapt immediately to Amaaz’s defense. This was, we were told, an extreme case of racially motivated police violence. Mobs gathered outside Rochdale Police Station, demanding retribution against the officer. Labour’s Paul Waugh, Amaaz’s local MP, visited the family. He described the family as ‘traumatised’ and demanded ‘justice’ over the assault. A charity called the Islamophobia Response Unit accused the police of an ‘unprovoked attack’ on an ‘unarmed Muslim man’. Shaista Gohir, CEO of the Muslim Women’s Network UK, said it was an example of ‘police brutality’, and compared it to the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Even UK home secretary Yvette Cooper weighed in, expressing her ‘deep concern’ over the footage.
All of them, seemingly, were prepared to believe that, in Britain in 2025, a man would be attacked randomly by police simply because of his race. None thought to wait for more information before declaring it an Islamophobic hate crime.
This week, after a three week trial at the Liverpool Crown Court, a jury has convicted Amaaz of assaulting police officer Lydia Ward, emergency worker Ellie Cook and a member of the public, Abdulkareem Ismaeil. It was unable to reach a verdict on whether Amaaz and his brother, Muhammad Amaaz, had assaulted another officer, PC Marsden. The pair will be retried on those charges in April next year.
What actually happened was as follows: Amaaz assaulted Ismaeil at the Manchester Airport Starbucks, after he and his brother had collected their mother who had flown in from Pakistan. She claimed that Ismaeil had abused her on the flight. After she pointed him out, Amaaz headbutted and punched him.
Alerted to the incident, officers approached Amaaz and his family at the airport’s parking ticket machine. Amaaz is shown kicking out at one of the officers, before hitting PC Ward to the ground with a left hook. When PC Cook tried to intervene, Amaaz landed a right-hand punch on her jaw. Then, as she fell to the ground, he punched her on her mouth with his left hand.
It only took a few days for the full footage to emerge, courtesy of the Manchester Evening News. But it was met with barely a shrug. None of those who accused the police of a brutal racist attack took back their words or sought to correct the record. Instead, all that followed was silence.
This reticence wasn’t confined to the political class, either. The police and the justice system also seemed curiously reluctant to respond to the incident. Months passed and nothing happened. Then, in October, Reform MPs Nigel Farage and Richard Tice pledged to bring a private prosecution of Amaaz unless the Crown Prosecution Service took action. It wasn’t until 20 December, nearly five months after the attack, when Amaaz was finally charged.
The Manchester Airport case is yet another reminder of how identity politics is poisoning Britain. Amaaz was declared a wholly innocent victim, based solely on his racial background and some highly misleading footage. Meanwhile, the officers who tried to restrain a violent man, and who were injured in the process, were demonised as racist and accused of unprovoked brutality. Even the justice system itself seemed to buy into this framing, with charges only being brought reluctantly and under significant political pressure.
This was two-tier Britain, caught on camera for all to see.
Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.
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