Andy Burnham has been accused of failing to hold “predatory” police officers to account over a woman’s alleged rape in custody.
Zayna Iman, who waived her right to anonymity in an attempt to bring the alleged perpetrators at Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to justice, told The Telegraph she felt Mr Burnham had let her down after saying he would help her.
Although her decision to speak out led the Mayor of Greater Manchester to commission an independent review into the treatment of vulnerable women in custody, she said the review was “a PR stunt” to help with “damage limitation”.
Ms Iman claims she was drugged and sexually assaulted in a cell while in custody at a police station in February 2021.
Shortly after she had gone public with her claims in July 2023, Mr Burnham commissioned Dame Vera Baird KC, the former victims’ commissioner, to carry out an independent review of the treatment of vulnerable women in custody and referred her case to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
Mr Burnham also issued a statement giving the “assurance” that her case would be “fully, properly and independently” reviewed, adding: “I will be overseeing things to ensure that everything is fully investigated.”
But Ms Iman told The Telegraph that she felt let down by Mr Burnham, whom she first contacted more than five years ago, shortly after her alleged ordeal at Pendleton police station in Salford.
Rather than help her get to the bottom of what happened, she claimed he had sent her “from pillar to post” and tried to “minimise” the damage because failures by GMP “directly reflect on him”.
As the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Mr Burnham is responsible for GMP, and is in charge of holding its chief constable to account.
“He said he would help me every step of the way to get what I wanted,” said Ms Iman, 41, who is still battling to get hold of all the footage of her time in police custody, five years on. “It was lip service. He’s not delivered on any of his promises.”
In the 12 months that followed her decision to go public with her story, Ms Iman met Mr Burnham four times to discuss her case.
But she feels he has not honoured his pledge to ensure that her case was properly investigated, saying: “Not a single officer has been sacked or held to account.”
Mr Burnham has said that if he wins the Makerfield by-election for Labour on June 18, he will challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the party leadership.
But as he aims for No 10, his record in Greater Manchester has come under intense scrutiny, along with his previous positions on a range of policies including immigration, tax and Brexit.
Ms Iman was arrested in the early hours of Feb 5, 2021, during the second Covid lockdown, when police broke into her home for a “welfare” check.
She had taken cocaine earlier that evening, and one of her friends dialled 999 because they were worried about her. She was taken into custody after knocking off a female police officer’s glasses.
Footage showed her being strip-searched and handcuffed by three female officers on arrival at Pendleton police station, despite appearing to be unconscious. She was then held at the station for 40 hours before being released with no charges and with no further action.
Ms Iman has attempted to piece together what happened to her during her time in custody from cell footage and police logs, which she obtained under a subject access request.
CCTV showed that she was either half-naked or fully naked in the cell at times, and appeared distressed and agitated, at one point gesturing towards what appeared to be bloodstains.
Shortly before she was released from custody and discharged to hospital, she recalled putting her hand between her legs and feeling blood. She also recalled having difficulty walking because she felt in pain.
Police admitted Ms Iman to hospital, citing an “acute psychotic episode”, hospital records showed.
However her medical records, seen by The Telegraph, confirmed that she had no history of mental health issues, and said it was “highly likely” that the “acute psychotic episode” she had suffered while in custody was “drug-related”.
“Zayna believes she had been drugged and raped. The ward are of the opinion that this is not a delusional belief given her ongoing pain symptoms,” her medical records said.
The record goes on to note that “there were no other symptoms consistent with a psychotic illness and the hallucinations”.
Her discharge note from the hospital said that any issues had been “resolved without treatment”, adding: “It is highly likely that this drug related [to] ‘the date rape drug’ which led to a sexual assault.”
Ms Iman alleges that police “pushed the narrative that I was psychotic” in an attempt to smear her and undermine any subsequent version of events that she recalled from her time in custody.
It took a year for GMP to hand over the footage she requested under freedom of information laws – and she believes certain key sections were missing even then.
She recalls being asked by a police officer whether she had “had anal sex before”, before one of the points where the video cuts out. In total, she believes 4.5 hours are missing from her time in custody, and it is during one of the missing intervals that she alleges she was drugged and raped.
Ms Iman first contacted Mr Burnham in April 2021, two months after she was released from police custody.
That June, she received a response from Baroness Hughes, the then deputy mayor for police and crime, who explained that she had contacted the chief constable’s office to request an explanation.
Lady Hughes said GMP “did not find any evidence to support the allegations” and confirmed that “there was video footage covering the entire incident at your address and CCTV in the police custody suite”.
After Ms Iman went public with her allegations on Sky News in 2023, GMP issued a public statement.
The force said two hours of CCTV footage had been lost because files were “corrupted” and, by the time this was discovered, the “parent footage on the servers had been overwritten”. GMP added that it was attempting to recover the footage by seeking the assistance of digital forensic professionals.
Ms Iman has questioned the changing narrative from the force between 2021, when the Greater Manchester mayor’s office asked for an explanation, and the GMP statement in 2023.
“It’s gone from ‘it existed and it’s been viewed in full’ to ‘it got corrupted and it’s nowhere to be found’. None of their stories have tallied up,” she said.
Three years on from going public, and five years on from the alleged assault in police custody, Ms Iman has still not recovered the missing footage.
The IOPC said it had completed its report, but not yet published it. The watchdog said it usually published a summary of its investigations after sending the full report to the complainant and discussing its findings with them.
Ms Iman has not seen the report or met the IOPC to discuss it, having lost confidence in its investigation.
The Baird Inquiry found that GMP custody officers had been carrying out “degrading” strip searches and unlawful arrests of vulnerable women. The chief constable apologised and promised to implement the review’s recommendations in full.
The review had set out to explore wider issues of experience of women and girls in police custody, and did not focus on Ms Iman’s case specifically.
She said the inquiry may have been useful for Mr Burnham “to appear as though he was doing something”, but it did not get her any closer to tracking down missing footage or bringing alleged perpetrators to justice.
“The Baird review was his way of solving the issue,” Ms Iman added. “He wanted to appear as though he was doing something. But it was a waste of time – just a routine exercise, like any other public review.
“So what are you going to do? Surely having predatory officers working for Greater Manchester Police and allowing that to continue for the last five years – that can’t be safe. I won’t be the only person that this has happened to. I never asked for any form of investigation or a public review. I simply asked for the footage – it has been operation cover-up since 2021.”
Responding on behalf of Mr Burnham, a Greater Manchester Combined Authority spokesman said: “The Mayor has always been clear that a thorough investigation of Ms Iman’s case by the IOPC was the right way forward, and in 2023 wrote to the IOPC to ensure that this took place.
“Following reports in the media in July 2023, the Mayor immediately commissioned … Dame Vera Baird to carry out an independent investigation into the experiences of people in custody in Greater Manchester, with a focus on women and girls, giving a voice to those who were failed by problematic cultures and practices.
“GMCA and GMP accepted all of the recommendations in that report, and within four months Greater Manchester ended the use of so-called ‘welfare’ strip searches of people in custody.
“We have also established an independent panel to hold Greater Manchester Police to account on the improvements they are making, including training for officers and support for victims and survivors.”
A GMP spokesman said: “We understand the concerns raised by Ms Iman’s serious allegations, which is why we referred this case to the IOPC in 2023 for an independent and rigorous review. We continue to provide the fullest assistance to those charged with establishing the truth, and await their findings before further comment.
“Following the issues publicly raised by Ms Iman, the Baird Inquiry was commissioned, and highlighted understandable concerns about the poor treatment of those in the report.
“By taking immediate action to implement all 26 recommendations, including ending the use of strip-search for welfare purposes, we have significantly improved our service for those in our custody.”
An IOPC spokesman said: “We have completed our investigation report, and have offered to meet the complainant to discuss our findings.”