Feds appeal immigration order freeing gunman
Ministry objects to board decision to release gangster pending deportation
The Canadian government has appealed an immigration order allowing convicted B.C. gunman Aram Ali out of jail pending the gang associate’s deportation to his native Iraq.
Last Friday, Immigration and Refugee Board member Laura Ko said she believed Ali should be allowed to stay with his family in Calgary until he is removed from the country for serious criminality.
She ordered the 33-year-old United Nations gang associate released on $5,000 bail and a number of conditions.
But a lawyer for the federal Public Safety Minister went to the Federal Court of Canada later the same day, asking for a stay of Ko’s order “on an urgent basis.”
Government lawyer Brenda Ward said Ko erred by not adequately considering an earlier IRB ruling from March which found that Ali “was a danger to the public.”
“The minister will be irreparably harmed if the respondent is released from detention,” Ward said in court documents obtained by Postmedia.
Federal Court Judge Patrick Gleeson granted an emergency stay of Ko’s order. But the Federal Court will hear full arguments from Ali’s lawyer and the government at a hearing Thursday morning.
Ali was convicted of shooting up a rival’s Range Rover outside Surrey’s T-Barz strip club in February 2009. The vehicle’s driver was struck, but the target of the shooting, Independent Soldier Tyler Willock, escaped injury.
Ali testified that he did the shooting for his friend, high-ranking UN gangster Barzan Tilli-Choli. At the time, Ali was on bail on a drug trafficking charge.
Postmedia obtained a copy of the March IRB ruling declaring Ali too dangerous to remain in the country. It’s signed by a “senior decision maker” identified only as C5869.
“After fully considering all the facts of this case, including the humanitarian aspects, and an assessment of the possible risks that Mr. Ali might face if returned to Iraq and the need to protect Canadian society, I find that the latter outweighs the former,” C5869 said.
Ali was sentenced in December 2015 to eight and a half years, but netted three and a half years after credit for his pretrial custody. Earlier this month, he reached his statutory release and was turned over to the Canada Border Services Agency.
The IRB decision maker noted that it was only luck that prevented more people from being injured or killed when Ali opened fire outside the busy strip club.
“The circumstances of Mr. Ali’s most recent offence are chilling,” C5869 said in their 21-page ruling.
“Called upon by a known leader of the UN gang in Vancouver, Mr. Ali left his apartment and his girlfriend to travel with this gang member to a strip club with the sole intent of harming an individual. The court described him as a mercenary.”
C5869 said Ali put “at risk members of the public and innocent persons who were in the company of the target.”
“As a young adult, Mr. Ali chose to associate with a criminal gang that already had a reputation for violence. He chose to traffic in drugs in order to make fast and easy money.”
Ali, who is from a Kurdish family, left Iraq as an infant and lived in a Syrian refugee camp for years before getting refugee status in Canada in 2000.
His lawyer Veen Aldosky said earlier that she would appeal the March ruling declaring her client a danger. She argued that Ali has matured since his involvement in the gang shooting and disassociated himself with the gang culture while in prison.
And he took courses to upgrade his education and improve himself.
Ali wrote to the CBSA in 2016 and said: “I’m embarrassed and ashamed of my wrong doings.”
“I understand what I’ve done is outrageous and irresponsible,” he wrote. “I put other people’s lives in danger and I have to live with that.”
As a young adult, Mr. Ali chose to associate with a criminal gang that already had a reputation for violence.