Jury retires in murder trial after Victoria lawyer tells of death threats

VANCOUVER — A British Columbia Supreme Court jury retired on Thursday to deliberate in the first-degree murder trial of Ibrahim Ali more than eight months after he pleaded not guilty to killing a 13-year-old girl in a Metro Vancouver park in 2017. The judge’s instructions to the jury had been delayed after Ali’s lawyer, Kevin McCullough, told the court the defence team had received death threats over the case.

In remarks on Tuesday that can only now be reported with the jury sequestered, McCullough read out a message that said his family faced “a violent and brutal death” before Christmas.

McCullough was unable to attend court in person the next day because he was at home in Victoria due to the threats, forcing the instruction of the jury to be postponed until Thursday.

Justice Lance Bernard told the jurors the Crown’s case is circumstantial, requiring them to infer as the only reasonable conclusion that Ali forced the girl off a path and into a wooded area in Burnaby’s Central Park, where he raped and fatally strangled her in July 2017.

Bernard said Ali’s lawyers argued that semen inside the girl’s body that matched Ali’s DNA could have been the result of an earlier encounter with an “innocent explanation” and Ali isn’t the person who killed her and dumped her body in the park.

The body of the girl, whose name is covered by a publication ban, was found hours after her mother reported her missing.

McCullough told the jury earlier in the trial that the defence team would not be calling evidence, saying the Crown hadn’t met the burden of proof.