Man, 21, who assaulted two female police officers at Manchester Airport jailed

A man who punched a female police officer at Manchester Airport, breaking her nose in an attack that went viral, has been jailed after she branded him “cowardly” in a powerful victim statement.

Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 21, received a three-and-a-half year prison sentence at Liverpool Crown Court. He was convicted last year of assaulting Pc Lydia Ward, causing actual bodily harm, during the July 2024 incident.

The court heard Pc Ward suffered a broken nose, with police bodycam footage showing her bloodied and distressed. Amaaz also assaulted Pc Ellie Cook, knocking her to the ground with elbows and punches.

Now a police sergeant, Ms Ward delivered her victim personal statement at Liverpool Crown Court on Friday, addressing Amaaz via videolink from prison, where he has been on remand for 11 months.

She told him: “I want you to take a good look at me. Take away that I am a police officer. Look at me, standing here. What do you see? I’ll tell you what you see. You see a female. A female who is 5ft2 and at the time of the incident I weighed no more than eight stone.

“You are a male and you chose to attack me without a second thought. You chose to attack a female. You knocked me to the ground with one punch, with so much force you broke my nose. What you did was cowardly.”

Sgt Ward continued: “What angers me is that afterwards, when only part of the footage was out in the public, you played the victim. You are not a victim. I am the one who was injured, not you. You had the whole world listening to you and you showed no remorse. Not one ounce.

“You allowed the public to feel sorry for you. You made out like we had done something wrong when all we were doing was our job. The things that have been written about me on social media are disgusting. Do I deserve to be spoken about in that way? I was made to feel like an idiot. You could have stopped that by telling the truth. Instead, you continued with this narrative, even when the full footage was published.”

Sgt Ward added that she has been left with a small scar on her nose, which would “forever remind me of what you did”. Amaaz was also found guilty of an earlier assault on a member of the public at a nearby Starbucks café.

Officers had responded to reports that a male matching Amaaz’s description had headbutted the Starbucks customer minutes earlier on July 23 2024. Prosecutors stated Amaaz resisted attempts to remove him, using a “high level of violence”.