Mohammed Fahir Amaaz has lost his appeal against a three-and-a-half-year sentence for attacking two police officers at Manchester Airport.
The 21-year-old was jailed in 2025 after being convicted of assault causing actual bodily harm against Sergeant Lydia Ward and assaulting PC Ellie Cook during the incident at Terminal Two on 23 July 2024.
On Friday, the Court of Appeal rejected his argument that the sentence was wrong in principle and “manifestly excessive”.
Amaaz and his brother, Muhammed Amaad, 26, had been involved in a confrontation with police beside a car park pay station. The incident followed Amaaz’s assault on Kuwaiti holidaymaker Abdulkareem Ismaeil, whom he accused of racially abusing his mother, Shameem Akhtar, after they met on an incoming flight from Pakistan via Qatar.
Sergeant Ward, then a constable, and two armed colleagues caught up with Amaaz as the group paid for parking and attempted to arrest him. He fought back before both brothers began throwing punches.
Amaaz punched Sergeant Ward in the face, knocking her to the ground and breaking her nose, before striking PC Cook with a series of elbows and punches.
Meanwhile, Amaad overpowered PC Zachary Marsden and repeatedly punched him before Amaaz joined the attack. The brothers were arrested after PC Cook discharged her 50,000-volt Taser at Amaaz.
After a four-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court, Amaaz was convicted of assault causing actual bodily harm against Sergeant Ward and assaulting PC Cook. A jury was unable to reach verdicts on allegations that the brothers had assaulted PC Marsden causing actual bodily harm.
Imran Khan KC, representing Amaaz, argued that the offences against the two officers had taken place during what he described as “unlawful detention by police officers”. He said Amaaz should therefore have been sentenced on the basis of “excessive self-defence”.
Mr Khan also argued that Judge Neil Flewitt KC had wrongly drawn “a specific adverse inference” from the unresolved jury verdicts and an acquittal relating to a separate actual bodily harm charge.
But Mr Justice Bryan, sitting with Lord Justice Jeremy Baker and Mr Justice Dexter Dias, rejected the appeal. He said footage clearly showed Amaaz “inflicting unprovoked violence against PC Ward and PC Cook”.
In a statement at Liverpool Crown Court in June, Sergeant Ward told Amaaz that he had “changed” her face. She criticised him for playing “the victim” after footage of the aftermath, filmed by onlookers, went viral.
“You used me as a punch bag, but I will get back up and I will show you how strong I am,” she said.
PC Cook told the court that she had been left “broken” and that her ambition to become a close protection officer was on hold because of the assault.
