The ten-second video doesn’t show much, just a quick shot of one Toronto police officer, then a second, who then reaches up to slap away the cellphone camera.

But the brief video recording captured the crucial part of Abdi Sheik-Qasim’s exchange with Toronto police Consts. Piara Dhaliwal and Akin Gul — enough for an Ontario judge to rule Sheik-Qasim had been assaulted by Toronto police, not the other way around.

“It saved my life, or at least a lot of headaches,” Sheik-Qasim, 32, said in an interview. Without it, “I would have probably been in jail right now.”

But the exonerating video almost didn’t make it into the courtroom.

In a development Ontario Court Justice Edward Kelly called “extremely troubling,” Sheik-Qasim’s phone went missing soon after he was charged with assaulting an officer and his belongings were confiscated by police. His phone has not been seen since.

While in detention, Toronto police booking video had recorded him asking about the whereabouts of his cellphone, “quite agitated and upset,” Kelly noted. When Sheik-Qasim was released from detention and still could not retrieve his phone, he was angry, knowing it had recorded the interaction.

It was only when he arrived back home that Sheik-Qasim realized he had enabled a function on the phone that automatically uploaded video files to his Google account. The recording was waiting for him when he checked his email.

“I almost had a heart attack. I was jumping up and down,” Sheik-Qasim said. “You cannot understand how happy I was.”

Neither Dhaliwal and Gul could be reached for comment Tuesday. Toronto police confirmed the officers are now being investigated by the force’s Professional Standards division.

The encounter occurred on the night of January 4, 2014, when Dhaliwal and Gul arrived at the apartment of Sheik-Qasim’s uncle to investigate a noise complaint. Sheik-Qasim had answered the door, explained his uncle had stepped out and turned down the music. He supplied his identification to the officers, who ran his name through a police database and determined he was not wanted on any outstanding warrants.

Sheik-Qasim then became frustrated when the officers did not leave and asked to enter the apartment. Sheik-Qasim declined, saying the cops didn’t have a reason to enter or a warrant. He then took out his phone to record the interaction — “I knew they were in the wrong,” he said.

Within seconds, Dhaliwal knocked the phone out of Sheik-Qasim’s hand and onto the ground, and Sheik-Qasim was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer and failing to comply with a court order.

When he was released from custody, police gave Sheik-Qasim his belongings back and gave him a phone — but not, he says, his own phone. It was his friend’s phone, which he says was inside the borrowed jacket he had been wearing.

At trial, both officers testified that Sheik-Qasim initiated physical contact by reaching for Gul’s utility belt, prompting Dhaliwal to react.

But Kelly ruled the video showed it would have been very difficult for Sheik-Qasim to make the aggressive move the officers said he had made.

“Officer Dhaliwal’s swing of his arm and hand was the very first physical force during the interaction. The accused didn’t grab a hold of the belt of Officer Gul in advance of this action by Officer Dhaliwal,” Kelly said, adding he had doubt it happened at all.

“I believe that Officer Dhaliwal’s action amounted to an assault against the accused,” Kelly said in a decision issued Sept. 10, acquitting Sheik-Qasim of both charges.

Kelly took issue with the officers’ testimony during the trial, calling it “deliberately misleading,” inconsistent with the video and “otherwise implausible.” Among the concerns he highlighted was Dhaliwal’s initial denial that he had slapped the phone from Sheik-Qasim’s hand and that it fell to the ground, and the officer’s statement that he had believed the phone could have been a disguised weapon, such as pepper spray.

The judge acknowledged that Sheik-Qasim likely used “inappropriate and provocative language.” Kelly said he also took into consideration Sheik-Qasim’s criminal history, which includes robbery and assault convictions and failing to comply with court orders.

But the judge said it is clear to him that Sheik-Qasim’s account of what happened at the critical moment during the altercation is consistent with what’s shown on the video. He also pointed to what he called “an essential question” that arose from the officers’ account of what transpired, namely that Sheik-Qasim had turned on his phone camera then proceeded to assault Dhaliwal.

“This would seem to be ill advised. One’s own criminal conduct would be recorded,” Kelly said, though he acknowledged the same thing could be asked about why would an officer swing his arm at a phone that was filming him.

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Kelly said it was “probable, although not certain” that Gul saw his colleague’s “unlawful act” of assault and that the officers retrieved the phone that was used to record the video.

Though Kelly did not rule definitively that Toronto police took possession of the phone after it was knocked out of Sheik-Qasim’s hand, he was troubled that the phone was never seen again after the altercation.

“The absence of the phone is extremely troubling when considered in light of the testimony of the officers, which I regard to be deliberately misleading,” Kelly said.

Alison Craig, Sheik-Qasim’s lawyer, said her client plans to file a complaint about the police conduct.

“My concern is that it happens with far more regularity than is ever uncovered,” Craig said. “If it wasn’t for the video, I think there is a very strong likelihood he would have been convicted.”