UN gangster weeps during attempted murder trial
United Nations gang associate Aram Ali broke down and cried at his attempted murder trial Tuesday as he recalled being broke and living in a car just a month before the shooting for which he’s now charged.
Ali, 29, told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Heather Holmes that he tried to find legitimate work to support himself and his girlfriend in January and February 2009.
Desperate for cash, he turned to UN gangster and fellow refugee Barzan Tilli-Choli and asked to deliver drugs for him, Ali testified through a Kurdish interpreter.
Ali is charged with two counts of attempted murder and one of discharging a firearm with intent to wound or disfigure for a Feb. 16, 2009 shooting near T-Barz strip club in Surrey.
The trial has heard that Ali was captured on wiretap just before the shooting telling Tilli-Choli that he would hit Red Scorpion gangster Tyler Willock “in the head.”
Tilli-Choli is also on the wiretap telling Ali to “shoot him all over his body.”
Willock was not injured when the Range Rover he was in was sprayed with gunfire, but the driver was wounded.
Tilli-Choli earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kill the Bacon brothers and their Red Scorpion associates and is serving a 14-year sentence.
Ali has pleaded not guilty to all counts and took the stand in his own defence Tuesday.
He suggested that he was simply Tilli-Choli’s employee who was called out when the UN gangster needed someone to watch his back or deliver cocaine and other drugs to customers.
Ali described one 2008 transaction where he took a taxi to a Coquitlam hotel with Tilli-Choli’s older brother. The pair carried a suitcase containing 12 kilograms of cocaine. The unnamed buyers took 10 kilos and paid Ali $480,000 cash, which he took back to Tilli-Choli. He was paid $5,000.
Ali told Holmes that he made about 20 of these deliveries of drugs around the Lower Mainland. After taking the cash to Tilli-Choli, his boss would usually take him out to eat and then to the No. 5 Orange strip club in Vancouver.
Ali said he got to know Tilli-Choli when both played on a Metro Vancouver soccer team of Kurdish refugees that was coached by Ali’s father.
Unable to find work after leaving Burnaby South secondary, Ali began drug trafficking himself in January 2008, he told Holmes. But he was soon arrested in North Vancouver. When Ali was released on bail, Tilli-Choli first approached him about delivering drugs, he said.
He worked for Tilli-Choli throughout 2008, but tried to pull away from the notorious gangster late in the year.
The break didn’t last long. Ali said he contacted Tilli-Choli again for work in January 2009.
Ali has not yet described the shooting, but will continue his testimony Wednesday.