An armed police officer who kicked a suspect in the head during an alleged brawl at Manchester Airport was ‘an uncontrolled bully with a badge’, a court was told today.
Police Constable Zachary Marsden had ‘defied protocol, ethics, procedure and the law’ in the confrontation at the pay station area of Terminal Two at Manchester Airport last July, the jury heard.
The trial at Liverpool Crown Court has heard PC Marsden – along with PCs Ellie Cook and Lydia Ward – were involved in the fracas with brothers Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, and Muhammed Amaad, 26.
The brothers are on trial accused of assaulting the three police officers after they tried to arrest Mr Amaaz.
The violent clash was sparked when the officers moved to detain Mr Amaaz for an earlier assault on a man at the Starbucks cafe inside the terminal, the jury has been told.
CCTV and mobile footage, which included PC Marsden kicking Mr Amaaz in the head and stamping on him, has been played several times in the four-week trial.
Prosecutors have also been shown jurors the ‘high level of violence’ they say was inflicted on the officers.
Chloe Gardner, defending Mr Amaad, told the jury in her closing speech: ‘In the heat of the moment, Mr Amaad did no more than was necessary. He believed he was under attack.
‘He was terrified and did know know what PC Marsden was going to do next. He was an uncontrolled bully in a badge.’
She said the CCTV was without sound and like ‘a jigsaw puzzle’, with the prosecution asking the jury ‘to guess the final picture’.
Ms Gardner likened the assessment of the CCTV evidence to watching a TV crime drama with the sound turned down.
She said: ‘I had Criminal Minds on the TV and I did not have much of a clue about what was going on because the sound was off. I could get the gist but not the full picture.
‘CCTV plays a central role here. It can be helpful but it comes with big warning signs because there is no audio and certainly cannot convey what is going on in someone’s mind.
‘Both sides in this case have played a fair amount of CCTV footage, sometimes at slow speed. We tend to forget how quickly this happened. It was a matter of seconds which has changed the lives of the defendants.’
She said the victim in the Starbucks incident, Abdulkareem Ismaeil, has decided not to take things any further and had not given evidence.
Ms Gardner said: ‘The prosecution say: “We have the CCTV and that is all the evidence we need.”
‘They have given you a jigsaw puzzle and have asked you to guess the final picture. You cannot assess the stature of Mr Ismaeil and whether he was getting wound up, hostile and intimidating.
‘The prosecution have not brought Mr Ismaeil here to fill in the gaps by giving evidence.’
She said that it was ‘crucial’ PC Marsden had ‘strode into the pay station’ and had grabbed Mr Amaaz without announcing he was a police officer.
Ms Gardner said: ‘Imagine if grabbing someone and not saying anything became standard police practice. Police Constable Marsden threw away the rule book long ago. His behaviour was aggressive and uncontrolled.’
She said the brother had said ‘easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, no, no, no’ in a bid to de-escalate the situation.
Ms Gardner continued: ‘But these words had zero effect on PC Marsden, who was covered in that red mist. He had no regard for procedure or doing things the right way. He acted how he wanted. His way was the only way.’
‘The reality is that PC Marsden, with his firearm and his Taser, was a firearm in himself.’
She said PC Marsden hit the brothers’ mother in the face with his Taser during the struggle and had continued to assault Amaad even when he had his hands on his head and when his brother was handcuffed on the ground.
Ms Gardner said the officer had smashed Mr Amaad’s face in the ground when he was trying to restrain him and had placed his knee on his neck.
She said: ‘PC Marsden could have killed Mr Amaaz with the kick and he could have suffocated Mr Amaad.’
On Thursday, the court heard that Amaaz had ‘fabricated’ a claim of self defence to try to justify his attack on PC Lydia Ward as well as colleagues PC Ellie Cook and PC Marsden.
Prosecutor Paul Greaney KC urged the jury to ‘trust their eyes and ears’ about what had been revealed in the trial ‘and the truth will be clear’.
He said that Mr Amaaz’s claim he did not know Ms Ward and Ms Cook were women ‘cannot exist in the real world we inhabit’.
The prosecutor said: ‘There is simply no justification for Amaaz to use any violence at all against Ms Ward, let alone punch her in the face and break her nose.
‘There is simply no justification for Amaaz to use any violence to Ms Cook, let alone punch and elbow her in the face.’
Trial judge Neil Flewitt told the jury earlier in his legal directions that social media reporting of the trial had been ’emotive and inaccurate’ and they should put such reports out of their minds and concentrate on the evidence.
He told them: ‘You may feel sympathy, upset or even anger. Emotions of that kind must play no part in your deliberations.
‘It is essential you put them to one side as they would distract you from your solemn duty. You need an objective and dispassionate appraisal of all the evidence.’
The judge said that the prosecution’s case was that the brothers’ ‘admitted use of force’ was offensive and not defensive.
He added: ‘The brothers claim they were acting lawfully at all times either in self-defence or in defence of each other.’
The judge said that the brothers were allowed to ‘ use reasonable force ‘ in self-defence if they believed they were under attack or about to be attacked ‘even in the heat of the moment when fine judgements are difficult’.
Mr Flewitt told the jury they will begin their deliberations on Monday after he has summed up the evidence in the case.
Amaaz denies one charge of assault by beating, two charges of assault causing actual bodily harm and one charge of assault by beating of a police officer acting as an emergency worker.
His elder brother Muhammed Amaad,26, is accused of one charge of assault causing actual bodily harm on PC Marsden.
The brothers from Rochdale, Greater Manchester claim they were acting in self defence.
