Greater Manchester Police have given a further update over allegations that surfaced last week that three women were allegedly strip searched and abused by Greater Manchester Police
A Sky News investigation had uncovered the case of Zayna Iman, who alleges that she was drugged and sexually assaulted while being held in custody by Greater Manchester Police.
When concerned by flashbacks from her 40-hours in custody, Zayna asked for the footage of her detention, along with custody logs, using a subject access request – which can be made to obtain personal information held by an organisation
Deputy Chief Constable Terry Woods said that the force would positively engage with the review that the Mayor Andy Burnham had set up with the former victim’s commissioner Vera Baird
He also gave an update over details of the CCTV footage
“We are obviously aware of and understand the concerns regarding the allegations that the force is withholding footage so I would like to provide reassurance.”
The following explanation details why, at this time, we have been unable to recover two one hour segments of the CCTV footage from the custody cell. It is not the case that we are withholding this deliberately.
“The footage was burnt onto four discs in hour long segments. One disc corrupted but files were recovered by the Digital Investigation Unit.
Upon review, it was identified that two hours (From 10:00 to 10:59 hours on 05/02/21, and from 13:00 to 13:59 hours on 06/02/21) were missing but, by that date, the parent footage on the servers had been overwritten (due to the standard retention time having passed).
However, we have recovered and secured the servers and have an active line of enquiry – being if the outstanding hours can be recovered by Digital Forensics professionals.”
