A retrial jury has been discharged after failing to reach verdicts in the case of two brothers accused of assaulting a police officer during a violent confrontation at Manchester Airport — leaving unresolved one of the most fiercely debated use-of-force cases in recent British policing history.
The discharge at Liverpool Crown Court means that for the second time, jurors have been unable to decide whether Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 21, and Muhammad Amaad, 26, both from Rochdale, assaulted armed officer PC Zachary Marsden during the three-minute brawl in the Terminal 2 arrivals area on 23 July 2024. Amaaz had already been convicted at the original 2025 trial of causing actual bodily harm to PC Lydia Ward — who suffered a broken nose — and of assaulting PC Ellie Cook. That conviction stands.
The confrontation began after Amaaz headbutted a Kuwaiti holidaymaker, Abdulkareem Ismaeil, at a Starbucks café in the terminal, having accused him of racially abusing his mother, Shameem Akhtar, who the family had just collected from an incoming flight from Pakistan via Qatar. Officers caught up with Amaaz and his brother as the two men were paying for parking, accompanied by their mother and a six-year-old relative.
What followed was captured on police bodycams and multiple CCTV angles. Footage shown to the jury depicted Amaaz resisting arrest before Amaad overpowered PC Marsden and began throwing punches. PC Marsden, 26, told the court his glasses were knocked off almost immediately, leaving him effectively blind during the struggle. To illustrate the point, he removed them in the witness box and told jurors he could only make out a “vague” shape of the prosecutor standing less than four metres away. Asked how he had felt, he answered simply: “Terrified.”
PC Marsden said he feared that the heavily-built Amaad was attempting to grab his loaded Glock pistol from its holster. He fired his 50,000-volt Taser at Amaad, while PC Cook subsequently Tasered Amaaz, who fell to the floor. It was at that point that PC Marsden kicked Amaaz in the face — the moment that, when it first emerged on mobile phone footage, provoked nationwide outrage and street protests, with demonstrators holding Black Lives Matter placards and calling for police to be defunded.
The public mood shifted sharply when fuller CCTV footage was later leaked to the Manchester Evening News, showing the violence to which the officers had been subjected. It took 150 days for prosecutors to confirm that PC Marsden would face no charges. A second male Greater Manchester Police officer who confronted bystanders filming the incident remains under criminal investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, as does PC Marsden himself — meaning he could yet be referred back to the Crown Prosecution Service.
At both trials, PC Marsden maintained he had kicked Amaaz to stun him, not realising in the confusion that the teenager had already been Tasered. He denied acting out of anger, retribution or revenge, and insisted he had exhausted all other options before resorting to the kick. “I joined this job to protect life, not take it away,” he told the court. “I’ll exhaust every other option possible before producing a lethal weapon.” He also denied that a subsequent stamping motion towards Amaaz’s head made contact, saying he was attempting to pin down a dangling radio wire so he could call for back-up.
The defence painted a markedly different picture. Imran Khan KC, who represented Amaad and is known for his decades-long role representing the family of Stephen Lawrence, told jurors that PC Marsden’s attitude had been: “I can do whatever the hell I want because I am a police officer with a gun.” Amaad’s counsel Chloe Gardner argued the kick could have proved fatal and that her client had been entitled to defend his brother. Lawyers for both brothers described PC Marsden as a “bad apple” overtaken by “red mist,” likening him to “RoboCop.”
Amaaz told the retrial he had not initially realised PC Marsden was a police officer — despite his uniform and cap marked “police” — and said he genuinely believed he was about to be murdered. “It felt like we were fighting for our lives,” he said. Under cross-examination, however, he accepted that being kicked in the face could not justify the violence he had directed at the officers moments before.
Prosecutor Paul Greaney KC dismissed the brothers’ self-defence argument, pointing out that the kick came after their assault on the officers rather than before it. “Any sensible analysis” of the evidence, he submitted, would show it was the brothers who were “out of control.”
Jurors were not told that Amaaz has been held on remand for the past nine months awaiting sentencing for the earlier convictions. Six members of the brothers’ family, including their older brother Abid, are current or former officers with Greater Manchester Police.
The case has prompted renewed calls from senior police representatives for greater political and public support for frontline officers. No date for any further proceedings has yet been announced.
