A B.C. Supreme Court judge called the two shooters "paid executioners being hired to kill a perfect stranger"
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Two would-be hit men who opened fire outside a busy Vancouver restaurant in 2020 have each been sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Liban Hassan, 27, and Ahmed Ismail, 38, pleaded guilty in B.C. Supreme Court last year to attempted murder for shooting Mir Aali Hussain outside the Bells and Whistles pub on Dunbar and 29th Avenue on Oct. 6, 2020.
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At the time, Hussain was carrying his baby in a car seat. His wife and three-year-old child followed close behind.
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Justice David Crossin said the details of the attempt on Hussain’s life were “horrific.”
And he noted that Hussain was not seriously injured because Hassan’s gun jammed after firing one shot, while “Ismail could not shoot straight.”
Otherwise the two Ontario men “would now be serving life sentences, and considering what to do with their lives in prison for the next, at least, 25 years,” Crossin said in his Oct. 4 ruling, which was released Wednesday.
“The proliferation of handguns, even in this country, continues to be bracing. Paid executioners being hired to kill a perfect stranger, who go about their business without regard to the prospect of collateral damage to blameless bystanders, is deserving of the highest rebuke.”
He noted that the Crown and defence made a joint submission in favour of a 10-year term, less credit for time in pretrial custody, leaving another five years, six months left to serve.
Crossin said the fall 2020 plot to kill Hussain “was conveniently memorialized in exquisite detail, by all participants in the scheme, in hundreds of text messages retrieved from phones during the investigation.”
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“The victim appeared to be targeted as a consequence of some kind of turf war between rival gangs in the Lower Mainland in relation to the drug trade,” Crossin said, adding that the two hired hit men were to be paid $150,000 each.
“They both arrived in Vancouver a week or two before the attempted murder. The offenders secured masks and other paraphernalia. They secured a getaway vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee, and two firearms: 1) a .45 Glock Model 30 semi-automatic pistol armed Mr. Ismail; and 2) a 9mm polymer 80 semi-automatic pistol, was provided to Mr. Hassan.”
The pair tracked Hussain and his family and decided to kill him as he left the restaurant about 6 p.m. Video of the area showed how busy it was with pub patrons, cyclists and others.
After the shots were fired, the two men tried to escape in a Jeep that crashed into a parked car. Police were in the area and both were quickly captured.
Crossin said that both men had come to Canada as Somali refugees and faced hardships. Both had criminal records before the attempted murder. But he said their decision to plead guilty was an indication of remorse.
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Their target — Hussain — was gunned down in Coquitlam a few months after the 2020 attempt in a still unsolved murder. Postmedia earlier investigated Hussain’s links to organized crime in both Alberta and Ontario.
Duncan Howard Bailey, a third man charged along with Hassan and Ismail, was also involved in the murder conspiracy, according to a B.C. civil forfeiture lawsuit.
But Bailey was killed in a plane crash in northern Ontario in April 2022 along with fugitive Gene Lahrkamp, who allegedly flew to Thailand earlier in the year to see former B.C. gangster Jimi Sandhu.
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