Brief reprieve for UN gang associate facing deportation
UN ‘mercenary’ called a danger to public but is granted time to be with family
United Nations gang associate Aram Ali will be released into the community while awaiting deportation to his native Iraq despite submissions by the Canada Border Services Agency that he is a danger to the public.
Immigration and Refugee Board member Laura Ko ruled Friday that placing the convicted gunman on strict conditions should protect Canadians while allowing Ali to spend time with his family until he gets the travel documents needed for his deportation.
Ko rejected arguments from CBSA representative Meelan Gene that Ali’s history of criminality and gang association would likely continue if he were to be released.
Gene noted that when Ali shot up the Range Rover of a gang rival outside Surrey’s T-Barz strip club in February 2009, he was on bail on a drug trafficking charge.
If released now, “it is all too likely that Mr. Ali will be tempted by the fast and easy money of criminality once again, which would result in further offences that would endanger members of the public,” Gene said.
She also pointed to comments from B.C. Supreme Court Justice Heather Holmes who called Ali “a mercenary for hire who was prepared to shoot a person for money and put other people at very serious risk.”
The 33-year-old was sentenced in December 2015 to eight-and-ahalf years for the shooting he carried out on behalf of UN gangster Barzan Tilli-Choli. The Range Rover driver was injured, but the intended target — Independent Soldier Tyler Willock — escaped injury.
Holmes said “it was by sheer luck that (the driver) or one of his passengers were not more seriously injured or killed.”
With credit for pre-trial custody, Ali got a net sentence of three and a half years and was transferred to immigration custody this month after serving two-thirds of the term.
The Immigration and Refugee Board ruled earlier that Ali, who was an infant when he fled Iraq with his family, is not eligible to remain in Canada due to his serious criminality.
Ko noted that Ali abided by bail conditions while living in Calgary from 2011 until he was tried, convicted and sentenced in Vancouver in 2015.
And she said Ali did well while imprisoned, completing high school and taking other pro-social programing.
“I think you would likely comply with conditions given your motivation and your past compliance with conditions,” she told him at the conclusion of a daylong hearing.
She ordered Ali to follow conditions imposed on him earlier by the Parole Board of Canada to steer clear of criminal associates, carry only a single cellphone and provide details of his finances to a probation officer.
She also imposed a 9 p.m. curfew and said he could be released after his mother Ramzieh Mouhammed put up a $5,000 bond.
“The bond being offered by your family offers an additional incentive,” Ko said. “This is giving you the opportunity to spend any time you do have with your family.”
Mouhammed testified at her son’s hearing, crying when she described how hard it will be when he is sent to Iraq.
She said through an interpreter that if her eldest son could be released, even for a short time, “it would be like the whole world is given to me.”
Ali’s lawyer Veen Aldosky argued that it would be unfair to hold Ali in custody while it is unclear how long it will take Iraq to issue the travel documents.
She said that she will be filing an appeal of the earlier Immigration and Refugee Board ruling against her client.
In addition to convictions for aggravated assault and discharging a firearm in the T-Barz shooting, Ali has an earlier conviction for drug trafficking. And he was also implicated by a witness at a gang murder trial last year as having accidentally shot at a UN gang associate in May 2008 while the gang was out hunting the Bacon brothers.
Tilli-Choli, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill the Bacons, was deported to Iraq in January 2017 after completing his sentence.
This is giving you the opportunity to spend any time you do have with your family.