A would-be assassin who flew from the US to kill a Birmingham shop owner as part of a violent feud has been found guilty of conspiracy to murder.
Birmingham Crown Court heard how Aimee Betro, 45, flew from the US to murder shopkeeper Sikander Ali at point-blank range outside his home in the Yardley area of the city in September 2019.
Prosecutors alleged that Betro hid her identity using a niqab when she tried to shoot Mr Ali – but the gun jammed, allowing him to flee.
Betro – originally from Wisconsin – was part of a plot orchestrated by co-conspirators Mohammed Nabil Nazir, 31, and his father, Mohammed Aslam, 56, who were in a violent feud with Mr Ali’s family.
During her trial, Betro said she had travelled to the UK on two previous occasions, having met Nazir on a dating app.
Asked why she had paid a third visit to the UK, arriving at Manchester Airport from Atlanta around two weeks before the shooting, Betro told jurors: “To celebrate my birthday, and I won tickets for another boat party in London.”
The court was shown CCTV of Betro waiting for 45 minutes outside Mr Ali’s house on the night of 7 September 2019.
As Mr Ali arrived home, Betro approached him with a firearm, but the gun failed to fire. Mr Ali is seen jumping back into his car and reversing away, clipping Betro’s driver’s side door in the process.
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The court heard Betro then goaded Mr Ali’s father, Aslat Mahumad, with whom her co-conspirators had a feud, through text messages including: “Where are you hiding?”, “Stop playing hide and seek, you are lucky it jammed,” and asking him to meet her at a nearby Asda.
Jurors were told co-conspirators Nazir and Aslam had been injured during disorder at Mr Mahumad’s clothing boutique in Birmingham in July 2018, leading them to conspire to have someone kill him or a member of his family.
In the early hours of the next morning and just hours after the failed shooting, Betro booked a taxi and returned to Mr Ali’s home, where she fired three shots at the property, which was empty at the time.
She then fled back to the US the next day before becoming involved in another of Nazir’s plots to get revenge on a rival.
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Prosecutors also said Betro sent three parcels full of ammunition and gun parts to the UK on 16 October 2019.
The court heard the parts, which were wrapped in foil and paper inside three cardboard boxes, were addressed to a man from Derby, with Nazir tipping off the police with the intent to frame him.
While the packages were intercepted and the man arrested as part of what the prosecution said was Nazir’s “devious scheme”, his involvement in the plan eventually came to light, and he was released without charge.
Betro, it said, was seen at a post office 100 miles away from her home address in the US posting the parcels under a fake name.
In the case of each of those three packages, Betro’s DNA has been found on the gun parts and ammunition inside them.
Betro had claimed it was all a coincidence, saying the woman on the CCTV was another American who looked, dressed and sounded like her.
It was alleged that Betro was in Armenia when Nazir and Aslam were jailed for 32 years and 10 years respectively in November 2024, but was extradited in January this year to face her own criminal proceedings.
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Jurors deliberated for almost 21 hours before convicting Betro of conspiracy to murder, possessing a self-loading pistol with intent to cause fear of violence, and a charge of illegally importing ammunition.
She was found guilty by majority 11-verdicts on the conspiracy to murder and firearm charges, and by a unanimous verdict on the ammunition charge.
Speaking to Sky News, Detective Chief Inspector Alastair Orencas, from West Midlands Police’s Major Crime Unit, called Betro’s crime “a brazen attempt,” adding that there “doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of effort to avoid detection”.
“I think she fell foul of a really slick, dynamic law enforcement operation over here,” he said.
“I don’t know whether that was her perspective from America, that that’s how we operate, but zero tolerance around firearms, criminality on these shores.”
Betro was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on 21 August.
Hannah Sidaway, specialist prosecutor from the Crown Prosecution Service in the West Midlands, said: “Only Betro knows what truly motivated her or what she sought to gain from becoming embroiled in a crime that meant she travelled hundreds of miles from Wisconsin to Birmingham to execute an attack on a man she did not know.”
