Fresh footage has emerged from the incident earlier this week at Manchester Airport, potentially undercutting the narrative of police brutality and racism that sparked Muslim protests in Rochdale.
New CCTV footage from Manchester Airport filmed prior to the viral video of a police officer kicking a man in the head as he was on the ground, has shown a violent altercation between two men and the police.
The new footage, published on Friday evening by the Manchester Evening News, appeared to show 19-year-old Fahir Muhammed Amas — who was later kicked in the head — punching a female police officer in the face and allegedly breaking her nose. He then appeared to knock down a second female officer.
Meanwhile, his brother, Amaad, seemingly threw several punches at a male police officer, knocking him to the ground. Fahir appears to join in, punching the officer and putting him in a chokehold before being tased himself by one of the female officers.
Responding to the new footage, Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said: “This is sick. These animals need locking up. I stand by what I said.”
Following the incident at the airport, Anderson told the BBC: “The message I am getting loud and clear from my constituents is that they are fed up with seeing police dancing around rainbows and being nice to people, and running away from rioters. They want the police to do their job and I think these police yesterday should be commended. In fact, I’d give them a medal.”
“If there’s a clear risk, if people are trying to take police officers’ guns, if they’re breaking female police officers’ nose, dragging police officers to the floor, sending police officers to the hospital, then I think police officers there have got a right to restrain those criminals as soon as possible and use whatever means it takes,” he added.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham was quick to brand Anderson’s initial remarks as “irresponsible,” while saying that the first video of Amas being kicked while on the ground was “very disturbing.”
After the additional footage was published, Burnham said: “This is a phenomenon of our time that video will emerge, from whichever source, but it will go out there and everyone then becomes an expert on it and says ‘I know exactly what happened’ and makes an unequivocal judgement.
“But life isn’t like that, the risk is you get consequences from those judgements and that can impact in communities, it can have an impact on public order. The thing I would say is, politicians really shouldn’t be part of that rush to judgement.
“These situations can be dangerous, people’s careers are on the line in these situations. I think we all feel for the police officers who were injured as a result of what happened, there’s a whole lot of stuff comes together and there’s a lot that we can learn from this.”
Following the incident on Wednesday, four men were arrested on suspicion of affray and assault, however, they were all later released on bail. Amas has claimed to have developed a “cyst” on his brain as a result of the altercation. Meanwhile, the police officer seen kicking Amas in the head was suspended and is reportedly under criminal investigation for assault.
The incident sparked Muslim protests in the area, including outside of the Rochdale police headquarters over the alleged “racist” actions of the police, with chants of “Allahu Akbar” [God is great/Our God is the Greatest] and “fuck the police.”
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