Man bought shovel night his ex-wife disappeared
Surveillance CLEVELAND — cameras captured the ex-husband of Roaa Al-Dhannoon buying a shovel with the close friend the night of the woman’s disappearance, prosecutors revealed in court Thursday.
Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Blaise Thomas held up still images that showed Fahad Saeed carrying a shovel as he walked beside Ammar Sami out of a Brooklyn Walmart about 11 p.m. Oct. 16.
The purchase came less than four hours after the last reported sighting of Al-Dhannoon and less than two miles from where her remains were found May 15 in a container buried in the ground at a creek bed, Thomas said.
Thursday’s revelation came during an at-times contentious sentencing hearing for Sami, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to obstructing official business for making false statements to investigators in the days after the killing.
Judge Nancy Margaret Russo sentenced Sami to 18 months in prison.
A grand jury last week indicted Saeed with aggravated murder, kidnapping, abuse of a corpse and other charges. He pleaded not guilty Monday and is being held on a $5 million bond.
The surveillance photograph offers the public its first glimpse into evidence in the prosecution’s case against Saeed.
Al-Dhannoon was last seen alive about 6:45 p.m. Oct. 16 at her Edgewater Drive apartment, police have said.
Saeed was seen loitering outside Al-Dhannoon’s apartment that day, police previously said.
Saeed was arrested within days on a misdemeanor charge of violating a protection order, which Al-Dhannoon obtained after she told court officials she feared for her life.
Sami told investigators probing Al-Dhannoon’s disappearance that he did not talk to Saeed and did not seen him after her Oct. 16 disappearance.
But cellphone records and the Walmart surveillance footage put Sami and Saeed together several times in the days that followed, investigators say.
Saeed called Sami, a close friend who is also from Iraq, and went to his house in North Olmsted the night Al-Dhannoon disappeared, prosecutors said. He spent the evening at Sammi’s house, prosecutors said.
Sami’s lawyer, Mark Stanton, said Thursday that Sami’s false statements came during more than eight hours of questioning over three days in November, and prosecutors left out key pieces of his interrogations.
Sami repeatedly told investigators that he suspected Saeed had done something to Al-Dhannoon, and even offered to wear a wire and try to elicit a confession from Saeed, Stanton said.
He eventually worked out a deal with investigators the day of his arrest, put on the wire and met with Saeed at a kabob shop, Stanton said. Sami told Saeed that the police were closing in and he needed to know happened, Stanton said.
Saeed suggested that Al-Dhannoon went to Detroit, where some of her relatives lived, Stanton said.
Thomas tried to intervene and accused Stanton of mischaracterizing the investigation, but Russo allowed him to continue.
Sami, Saeed, Al-Dhannoon and others emigrated to the U.S. from Iraq on refugee visas by way of Turkey, Stanton said.
Sami’s family are Kurdish, Sunni Muslims and he and his siblings fled their homeland outside Baghdad and the ravages of ethnic conflict in the midst of the U.S.-Iraq War.
Sami’s father assisted the U.S. Army in the Iraq War and was kidnapped and killed in 2006, Stanton said. In 2012, an explosive detonated in his apartment building and tore through Sami’s legs.
He arrived in the U.S. in 2015, and filed for a marriage certificate last summer, Stanton said. The traditional Muslim marriage ceremony that would have finalized the marriage was scheduled for four days after his arrest, Stanton said.
Stanton said that Sami knew that the marriage between Saeed and Al-Dhannoon was rife with domestic violence and he tried to help the woman.
He continued to associate with Saeed because the Iraqi refugee community in northeast Ohio is small and close-knit, Stanton said.
Stanton said that Sami knew something was wrong when Saeed showed up to his apartment the night of Al-Dhannoon’s disappearance, but he didn’t know the woman had been killed, Stanton said.