Dr Rashid Abbasi brought a civil claim for false imprisonment, assault and battery against Northumbria Police after he was arrested on a paediatric intensive care unit
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Northumbria Police forcibly remove father from dying daughter’s bedside in 2019
A dad who sued police after he was forcibly removed from his dying daughter’s hospital bedside lost his case against them today.
Dr Rashid Abbasi brought a civil claim for wrongful arrest, false imprisonment and assault and battery against Northumbria Police, after officers dragged him away from an intensive care unit in August 2019. Alarming police body camera footage showed Dr Abbasi, 62, being dragged from the side of his critically ill six-year-old daughter Zainab’s bedside on the children’s intensive care unit of a North east hospital.
Judge Recorder Mr James Murphy said: “I would be very surprised that a member of the public let alone a police officer would not have decided there was likely to be a breach of the peace. The attitude of Dr Abbasi at the time described by the nurses on the ward and also the security guards paint a much more accurate of pictures of the menace that was present on the ward used by Dr Abbasi, it is perfectly clear to me looking at his demeanour and attitude.
“If I was a bystander having watched this footage, a reasonable description would have been that Dr Abbasi was a coiled spring waiting to breach the peace.”
He added there was more than sufficient reason and grounds for the police to believe that there was an imminent risk of a breach of the peace due to his behaviour in a. meeting before the incident happened. His rights ‘were not curtailed’ amounting to unlawful arrest, assault and batter and false imprisonment.
“Many members of the public have the unfortunate experience of attending paediatric intensive care,” he added. “It was exceptional that police would be called not once but twice in four days, it is exceptional that any parent would behave in that way. In my judgement, he would have done that again and the recipients of the breach of peace would have been members of staff in a vulnerable position, and their position was to provide care to a grievously ill child.”
Dr Abbasi and his wife, Aliya, were told that medics wanted to remove their daughter, Zainab, from a ventilator that was keeping her alive. The little girl suffered from a rare life-limiting neurodegenerative condition called Niemann-Pick Disease, which affects the body’s ability to metabolise fat within cells. It can affect vital organs including the brain, nerves and liver, and in severe cases the lungs.
Her parents, from Newton Aycliffe, Co. Durham, believed that the doctors became increasingly reluctant to tackle even the treatable respiratory problems because of her underlying life-limiting neurodegenerative disease.
But the judge Recorder James Murphy said that staff had found his behaviour ‘intimidating’ and he had been asked to only visit the ward between the hours of 9am to 5pm.
There was a meeting to inform him of that decision and he was described as being ‘very angry’ when told he could not return to intensive care unit.
He was said to have pushed a staff member out of the way and security was called.
They decided not to intervene, and police were called. Bodycam footage showed Dr Abbasi being removed from the ward, when he can be heard shouting that he had chest pains and was having a heart attack.
He asks for his medication, when the police officers accuse him of biting them as he is tied down onto a stretcher.
Dr Abbasi can be heard calling the police ‘b******s’ and the officers were heard warning him about his behaviour and asking him to co-operate before he was arrested and dragged to the floor.
The court heard that there was ‘evidence of bleeding’ suffered by one of the arresting officers.
The Judge found that Dr Abbasi did not give an honest account of the risk of his daughter being intubated, that is that her tube would have been removed, if he did not return to her bedside.
As a doctor, he ‘would have known’ that the parents’ consent would have to be given to do so, and that consent had not been given.
It was a ‘truly shocking’ incident, the judge said in his judgement, and had been described as such by staff at the trial at Newcastle crown court this week, which concluded today.
“These events had a background which could not be ignored,” the judge said.
The background was that Dr Abbasi and his wife had a history of making complaints about their daughter’s treatment at two hospitals closer to their home.
Their daughter’s treatment plan caused numerous disputes between the parents, who are both doctors, and the medical team supporting Zainab about the appropriate intensity of treatment, culminating in the incident captured on a police body camera. Zainab died four weeks later.
Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, Dr Abbasi and his family began legal proceedings against Northumbria Police, alleging assault and battery and false imprisonment.