In a statement released by GMP on 26 July, Deputy Chief Constable Terry Woods said the force “[understands] and [shares] the concerns of the public regarding allegations against Greater Manchester police”.

He continued: “Miss Iman’s allegations regarding her treatment in custody, in February 2021, are subject to an ongoing investigation. The force made a referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) which instructed a GMP-led investigation.” Woods added that he had “taken the decision to make another referral to the IOPC in order to assure Miss Iman and the public that all of her allegations will be rigorously and independently reviewed.”

Woods also issued an update on 2 August, saying GMP is “obviously aware of and [understands] the concerns regarding the allegations that the force is withholding footage”. He said that GMP had “been unable to recover two one-hour segments of the CCTV footage from the custody cell”, but was not “withholding this deliberately”.

He continued: “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).”

Woods said that GMP has now recovered and secured the servers and has “an active line of enquiry – being if the outstanding hours can be recovered by digital forensics professionals”.

The Justice For Zayna campaign is calling for an end to misogyny and racism in policing