Murder trial’s star witness won’t testify
About-face after one day on stand stuns courtroom
The prosecution’s star witness in the first-degree murder case of Mohamed Najdi’s gangland shooting has refused to testify.
The man, whose identity and any information that would tend to identify him are shielded by a sweeping publication ban, first took the witness stand last week, under police guard.
When Crown prosecutor Mike Boyce began to ask about the night of Jan. 10, 2016 — when, prosecutors allege, Najdi, 28, was gunned down as he ran for his life from men who planned to kidnap the drug dealer for a ransom — the witness refused to testify.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said, stunning homicide detectives, prosecutors, defence counsel and the jury. “Sorry guys … I’ll take my charge. As far as this goes, I’m done, bro.”
Mohamed Mohamed and Nedeljko Borozan are each charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting. The Crown alleges that Mohamed was the gunman who shot Najdi twice after he broke free from the ambush at a Claremont Drive parking lot. Borozan, according to the Crown, supplied and loaded the weapon used. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
The court cited the unco-operative witness for contempt. He would be the first.
On Monday, some of the men prosecutors allege hatched the plan with the accused were paraded in front of the jury.
It’s the prosecution and police theory that Najdi was targeted by the group of seven for agreeing to be a police witness in an unrelated homicide. All of the men alleged to be involved in the plot to kidnap Najdi were charged with either firstdegree murder or manslaughter.
Ali Elenezi, also under guard by police, refused to even be sworn in on the witness stand. He, too, was cited for contempt.
Lual Lual, however, identified Mohamed and Borozan as men with whom he planned and orchestrated the botched kidnapping. He told the jury he’d known Borozan “a couple months,” but didn’t really know Mohamed that well.
Crown prosecutor Julien Lalande asked him to pick out the men in the room. Lual identified his coconspirators as the two men sitting side-by-side in the prisoner’s box.
“There’s two people right there — Mohamed Mohamed and Borozan.”
Lual pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in March for his role in the killing, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. A publication ban prevented any reporting on the plea until a jury was selected in Mohamed and Borozan’s trial.
Lual, after being confronted with his earlier statements to the court, adopted much of the statements agreed upon at the time of his plea, though he said repeatedly that time had faded his memory.
“It happened so long ago, it’s hard for me to remember,” Lual told the court.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean allowed prosecutors to cross-examine their own witness on inconsistencies between the facts he swore to when he pleaded guilty to his crime and his testimony Monday.
The soft-spoken Lual, who goes by the street name “Gorilla,” admitted in a near whisper that the plan was to demand a $40,000 ransom from Najdi’s family, that they concocted that plan over two hours at the Vanier home of one of the men, and that he and another man were armed with two of four loaded guns and wore balaclavas as they rolled up on Najdi.
In a rare move, at the end of his own plea in March, Lual took the witness stand to confirm there was nothing he did not understand, that he was giving a true and complete account of what he knows, that nothing in the statement he swore to needed to be added, changed or removed and that no one influenced him. That was once again put to him Monday.
Lual also agreed with his previous statement to the court that Mohamed and Borozan were also both armed and “standing at the ready” during the attack.
The trial continues Tuesday.