How Manchester Airport row led to fury on the streets
What is clear about the incident at Manchester Airport that has led to large protests is it was a sprawling and noisy affair that shocked onlooking passengers and reduced parts of Terminal 2 to chaos.
Several videos have emerged showing the police as they deal with what they describe as an altercation between members of the public.
While much of what happened remains unclear, the problem appears to have started on a flight from Pakistan that landed in Manchester on Tuesday evening.
Words were spoken between a middle-aged woman of Asian descent and another passenger, the woman’s family told The Telegraph.
Once on the ground, it is believed that the woman was collecting her luggage in the arrivals hall when the same passenger, a man, began jostling her with his trolley and making racist remarks.
Shortly after, the woman met her two grown-up sons, Mohammed Fahir Amaz and Mohammed Amahd.
She pointed out the man to them, telling her sons what had occurred, at which point one of the men confronted him and an altercation ensued.
Police officers became aware of the altercation at or around 8.25 pm and began tracking the family through the airport using cameras.
As they were making their way into the car park and were near the ticket machines, it is claimed officers accosted the family.
From here, the situation appeared to deteriorate rapidly.
According to family sources, the mother was allegedly struck in the face by an officer, at which point a serious confrontation began.
So far, no video evidence has emerged publicly of this initial encounter with Greater Manchester Police (GMP).
This is the stage at which, according to the force, a female officer suffered a broken nose, one of three officers to have needed hospital treatment following the encounter, having been “punched to the ground”.
In its first public statement, GMP highlighted the added tension arising from the fact that the officers involved were carrying guns.
“As the attending officers were firearms officers, there was a clear risk during this assault of their firearms being taken from them,” a spokesman said.
A source reported the men as having said: “We were not there to attack anybody. It was just happening. Our mum was just hit in the face and we were being treated unfairly.”
Speaking on BBC Radio Manchester on Thursday morning, Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, said the full footage of the incident showed a “fast-moving and complicated” situation with “issues for both sides”.
It is then that video footage starts to emerge of what happened next.
The video which originally sparked the anti-police outrage and other footage portray a scene of utter carnage.
Mr Fahir Amaz is lying face down on the terminal floor with his arms and legs protruded straight.
His mother crouches over his body while two armed officers point their tasers at him.
At this point, Mr Fahir Amaz moves his head and the male armed officer kicks him in the face and then appears to aim a stamp at his head with his boot.
It is unclear whether he stamps fully on his head or missed.
As the woman nurses Mr Fahir Amaz’s head in his hands, the same officer then moves over to a nearby row of seats, at which Mr Amahd is sitting.
Again pointing his taser, he shouts at the man to “get down” and then kicks him in the upper leg.
Other officers can be heard ordering members of the public who were filming the incident to move back.
A female police officer not immediately involved in restraining the men appears to be visibly upset and is later taken away by a colleague.
It is not clear whether she was one of those injured earlier or what exactly caused her distress.
In a second video of the same scene, bystanders appear to have gathered and shouts of “f-----g dogs”, can be heard, as officers continue to order people back.
This footage shows Mr Amahd being grappled on the ground by two officers, one of whom appears to put a knee on his head.
A trolley loaded with luggage is knocked over, spilling suitcases all over the floor.
The two men are taken off – ultimately to Cheadle Police Station – and an onlooker beckons the men’s mother to come away.
Someone declaring “Racism at its finest. Police brutality” is heard.
On Thursday, another flurry of videos emerged appearing to portray a follow-up incident in the same area of the terminal.
Amid a lot of shouting, a group of three different men of Asian descent, one of whom is using his phone to film, are accosted by GMP officers, one of whom is pointing a taser.
The man who is filming shouts: “No, no, no, no, we have not done nothing”, while one of the newly arrived officers shakes up a can of Pava spray.
The officer holding the taser then points at the man holding the camera and says “he’s getting locked up”, at which point he is sprayed in the face and put into a headlock.
At this stage in the video, the officers do not appear to offer him the chance to surrender peacefully.
A further video shows a large man of Asian descent wearing a red T-shirt collecting the mobile phones from the floor of the men who have been detained, in what appears to have been an effort to be helpful
An armed officer then accosts him and takes them out of his pocket.
As Wednesday progressed, the first video showing the head kick went viral.
The two men were released from Cheadle Police Station and, shortly afterwards, took part in a video with a lawyer called Akhmed Yakoob, who claimed that they had been forced to make their own way to hospital to see to their injuries.
Speaking from Rochdale, where the men live, he said they would shortly visit the local police station to make a formal complaint at their treatment.
By the evening, a large crowd had amassed outside Rochdale Police Station.
Chants of “Allahu Akbar” were heard and, according to the Manchester Evening News, fireworks set off.
On Thursday morning, Greater Manchester Police announced that the officer in question had been suspended and that the force had referred itself to the police watchdog.
Mr Burnham and other politicians tried to calm the mood.
Lee Anderson, the former Conservative Party deputy chairman and now a Reform UK MP, praised the police.
Later in the day, GMP announced that a second referral to the Independent Police Complaints Commission had been made, this one referring to the spray incident.
It came too late to prevent another evening of protests on Thursday night, as hundreds of people gathered in Manchester city centre in the second mass demonstration in as many days.
Holding signs which read “gangsters in uniform” and “no justice, no peace”, they blocked traffic and trams for an hour as they sat in the middle of Peter Street. Some of them wore keffiyehs and held Palestine flags.
At one point, Mr Yakoob and his entourage arrived and urged the crowd to disperse, telling them: “Everyone please be peaceful, we are here for a reason”.
The solicitor, who brandished a megaphone, led the majority of the crowd a few hundred yards away to protest outside Mr Burnham’s offices.
A splinter group remained and continued to block traffic.
When they finally left, one protester shouted over a megaphone: “We have disrupted traffic and we have got our victory.”
A group of around 30 protesters later gathered outside Rochdale Police Station and one of them threw eggs at the building.