Police’s ‘brutal’ intrusion into a grieving family’s sombre vigil
BETWEEN crisp white hospital sheets lies a little girl in a pink nightdress, a dark bundle of glossy black hair splaying out behind her on a well plumped pillow. Her father is at her side, tenderly stroking her right arm as her mother watches. Just 30 minutes earlier, parents Rashid and Aliya Abbasi had been told the time had come for six-year-old Zainab to die.
Yet within moments their tragic bedside vigil turns into a violent clash with police, who at one point are filmed with their hands around Rashid’s neck. He is dragged away from his dying daughter, in handcuffs and with his legs and ankles strapped together, as a female officer snarls into his face: ‘You’re acting like an animal, it’s disgusting.’
Video footage from a police bodycam shows that the scene when officers arrived at the hospital ward is sombre and calm. Rashid and Aliya appear to be quietly coming to terms with the devastating news that doctors believe their beloved daughter, who has been critically ill in hospital for three weeks, is dying and should be removed from her ventilator.
Rashid is sitting hunched forward in a blue hospital chair beside the bank of machinery keeping Zainab alive. A curtain is drawn back as the couple, who were accompanied by one of their sons, feel no need to seek privacy.
Aliya, towards the foot of the bed, seems too exhausted to be scared – or even surprised – when she sees the police officers, three male and one female, approaching. One of the men asks Rashid: ‘May I have a quick word with you, Sir? Not here, if you could just come outside.’ Rashid replies quietly: ‘No, I don’t want to leave my daughter: my daughter is dying.’
When the PC repeats his request, Aliya starts to explain, believing the officers are unaware of the distressing news which has just been delivered. ‘We have just been told, about half an hour ago, that they are going to take the tube out and our daughter is going to die so, to be honest…’ Her voice tails off as she struggles to articulate her distress.
Aliya invites the officers to sit with them at the bedside, saying: ‘You’re welcome to drag up a chair and just sit here and talk to us.’ The couple show no signs of refusing to co-operate, but they do not wish to leave their child.
Rashid is told by an officer his behaviour is ‘of some concern’. He responds: ‘This is a lie.’
‘Was Friday a lie as well, about your behaviour, which is why the police were called?’ the officer asks, making the exchange more confrontational, while repeating requests to take the conversation outside.
His colleague, tall with a shaven head, steps past Aliya to take up a position behind Rashid. He appears to repeat a scripted request for cooperation: ‘Is there anything I can reasonably say or do to get you to listen to what I am saying and comply with what I am asking you to do?’
Neither parent has yet raised their voice or stood up. Aliya again tries to explain their desperation: ‘They are going to take the tube out of our daughter, she is going to die… she is on a ventilator’ but her words are cut off by the officer.
A nurse in a navy uniform puts her own hand protectively on Zainab, just inches from where the father is still gently holding his daughter’s arm.
As the police continue to insist the parents leave their daughter’s bedside, Aliya again pleads: ‘My daughter is dying on a ventilator, I don’t think you quite understand…’
The officers again ask Rashid to stand up and come with them, this time raising the spectre of arrest if he doesn’t comply with their request. Aliya then stands up and pleads with a hospital consultant on the ward: ‘Is this what you guys want?’
The nurse, who by this point has been joined by a colleague, then tells Rashid that if he’s arrested, instead of returning to his hospital accommodation he will lose immediate access to his daughter: ‘You’ll not be close to her,’ she says.
Her words are intended as an act of kindness but they seem to encourage a more forceful attitude from the tall male officer who emphasises: ‘There’s accommodation up by Accident and Emergency that’s a lot closer than the police station where he won’t be able to leave, so perhaps you should consider that before making your decision.’
Aliya begs for them both to be allowed to stay, not to waste a moment of their remaining time together. ‘When someone has got hours… we look after her 24 hours, 24 hours a day.’
She appeals to the tall male officer to empathise and feel her grief for a moment. ‘Do you have children?’ she asks. He says he does, but then checks himself and adds: ‘Not that it’s relevant here.’ Now the female officer steps in, telling Aliya what’s best for her dying child. ‘What is best for your daughter is not to have this kind of confrontation around her. She is in the best care, in the best place.’
Aliya responds: ‘She’s not, she’s not.’ But the female officer, clearly disgruntled at being challenged, insists: ‘Yes she is, yes she is,’ jabbing the air in front of her. When Aliya defends herself the female
‘No, I don’t want to leave my daughter, my daughter is dying’
officer begins to lecture her: ‘You’re incorrect. The top and bottom of this is this environment you are putting your daughter in isn’t appropriate… Your husband is creating an issue.’
Aliya pleads for understanding: ‘Were you told that half an hour ago [a doctor] informed us that they were going to take the tube out?’ Her voice, so calm until this point, starts to catch with emotion.
But the female officer says bluntly: ‘Yes but they are not doing it right now!’ prompting the desperate mother to ask: ‘Do you know what compassion is?’
Her appeal gets her nowhere, as the female officer tells her ‘from one mother to another that this is not right’. Aliya says: ‘Do you know what I have to deal with here?’
Now, five and a half minutes into the confrontation, the tall male officer repeats his ‘is there anything I can reasonably say or do…’. script before leaning over Rashid.
He starts to physically remove him, repeating: ‘Leave go of your daughter.’ The officer wearing the bodycam and the female officer grab Aliya from behind and pull her backwards. Pandemonium breaks out. Aliya falls to the floor and screams in shock.
Her terrified cry prompts an anguished bellow from Rashid, who is then dragged backwards from the bed while still sitting in his chair.
Officers wrestle with his flailing arms and one policeman puts his
hand on the father’s neck, beneath his chin, his fingers clearly visible against the grey hairs of the older man’s beard. As Rashid is levered away from his daughter’s bed, the command ‘On the floor!’ is clearly given.
Three officers, including the one wearing the bodycam, struggle with Rashid, yelling at him ‘Stop fighting,’ while the female officer and man who appears to be a security guard restrain Aliya. After a fierce struggle, Rashid, panting with exertion and fear, is overpowered and handcuffed.
He complains of chest pains only to be told by the tall male officer: ‘You have brought this on yourself.’
‘We’ll take you to A&E, that’s absolutely fine,’ says the female officer. ‘Please come with us and act responsibly, you’re an adult, you’re an educated person.’
By now Rashid is lying prone on the polished pale grey floor of the ward, his head jammed into the wooden frame of a closed hospital door. He is clearly in physical and mental distress, groaning and grimacing.
Police try to get him to sit up, but he resists, continuing to repeat that he has chest pain and asking for the emergency medication he has in his pocket.
The female officer tells him he cannot have it until he complies with their orders. ‘If you sit up reasonably… we’ll get your medication.’
The officers attempt to sit Rashid, by now handcuffed, on a chair but the scuffle continues as he screams and
You’re acting like an animal... your behaviour is disgusting
then accuses one of the male officers of kicking him. With mounting anger the father yells: ‘Why are you are kicking me, you bastard… what are you doing?’ The policeman can be heard denying the accusation.
He slides back on to the floor, telling the officers he is too dizzy to sit up. Distressingly, he repeatedly shouts for his medicine, warning the officers ‘I will have a heart attack!’
The officers then tie him with a double leg restraint, one around his thighs and another at the ankles and then, satisfied that he has been immobilised, lift him on to a waiting trolley. All the time he screams: ‘Let me have my medicine. I’ve got chest pain! I will have a heart attack!
‘You animals. Animals. Animals,’ he says. The female officer believes he is trying to kick her and clearly loses her temper, snarling: ‘You are acting like an animal. It’s disgusting.’
She orders her male colleagues ‘Get him out.’ She then tells Rashid again: ‘Your behaviour in front of your child is disgusting.’
A male officer accuses Rashid of biting him and later appears to show the camera a wound on his hand. Rashid is heard denying the claim.
There are further furious exchanges as Rashid is pushed through double doors out of the ward and out into a corridor and he attempts to grab one of the officers with his cuffed hands. The female officer shouts ‘stop biting’ and Rashid replies ‘I’m not biting.’
He accuses the police of hurting his wrists and repeatedly asks for his medicine. They reassure him that they are taking him to A&E for urgent help but one of the officers appears to tell him: ‘If you act like an animal, you are going to be [treated] like one.’
As he is wheeled into a corridor, the bodycam footage cuts out.