With prison term served, gangster deported to Iraq
A high-ranking member of the United Nations gang has been deported to his native Iraq after finishing his sentence for plotting to kill the Bacon brothers.
Postmedia has learned that Barzan Tilli-Choli, who came to Canada as a teenager in 1999, was transported to Iraq on Tuesday by officers with the Canada Border Services Agency.
On Monday, he left Kent prison in the Fraser Valley, where he was serving his term after pleading guilty in July 2013 to conspiracy to commit murder.
His deportation was not a surprise.
Two years ago, Immigration and Refugee Board member Marc Tessler told Tilli-Choli he had no choice but to order the gangster’s removal from Canada because of his serious conviction and the fact he was not a Canadian citizen.
Then last August, two Parole Board of Canada members concluded that there was no need to keep Tilli-Choli incarcerated beyond his statutory release date this month because he was going to be deported to Iraq.
They were provided with a psychologist’s report from July that said Tilli-Choli was “a low risk of re-offending if you are to be removed to your home country, although your risk would be significantly higher if you were to remain in Canada.”
Tilli-Choli also provided the parole board with support letters from relatives in Iraq.
He and several others in the UN gang admitted they were involved in “human safaris” targeting their Red Scorpion rivals over several months in 2008 and 2009.
He was sentenced to 14 years minus almost nine years as double credit for the 4½ years he spent in pre-trial custody, for a net term of five years and three months.
Tilli-Choli was later identified in a related prosecution as the shooter who blasted an AK-47 at Jonathan Barber in Burnaby in May 2008, killing the stereo installer who had been mistaken for one of the Bacons.
When Tilli-Choli was arrested in March 2009, he had photos of the Bacons on his iPhone. He was also captured on wiretaps attempting to get a gun for an attack on a limousine the Bacons were in following a January 2009 concert in downtown Vancouver.
“The Pigs gangsters are here, man,” Tilli-Choli said in the recording. He also said that whoever was in the limo “is gonna get” shot.
A month later, Tilli-Choli and others shot up the vehicle of another Bacon associate outside TBarz strip club in Surrey.
Tilli-Choli was born in the Kurdistan province of Iraq and came to Canada as a 17-year-old.
Staff Sgt. Lindsey Houghton, of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, said Tilli-Choli is just one of several gangsters living in B.C. who have recently been deported because of serious criminality.
“We have seen several people and families come to Canada in the past and they make the choice to involve themselves in gangs, organized crime, and violent lifestyles,” Houghton said. “These choices not only lead to tragic ends for many of those involved, but can also lead to those people being removed from Canada.”