The Law Courts building, which is home to B.C. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, is seen in Vancouver, on Thursday, Nov. 23, 2023. A British Columbia Supreme Court jury has retired to deliberate in the first-degree murder trial of Ibrahim Ali, more than eight months after he pleaded not guilty to killing a 13-year-old girl in a Metro Vancouver park in 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
VANCOUVER – A jury is resuming deliberations today in the case of Ibrahim Ali, whose marathon first-degree murder trial in B.C. Supreme Court wrapped up Thursday.
Ali is accused of murdering a 13-year-old girl in a Burnaby, B.C., park more than six years ago.
The closing stages of the eight-month trial this week heard that Ali’s defence team had been receiving threats over the case, with lawyer Kevin McCullough reading out one that said his family faced “a violent and brutal death” before Christmas.
Those claims were heard Tuesday without the jurors present and can only now be reported after they retired to consider their verdict late Thursday.
In his instructions to the jury, Justice Lance Bernard told jurors the case against Ali is circumstantial, requiring them to infer that Ali raped and strangled the girl in Burnaby’s Central Park in July 2017.
Bernard said Ali’s lawyers argued in the alternative that there could be an “innocent explanation” for semen matching Ali’s DNA being found inside the girl as a result of an earlier encounter, and someone else later killed her and dumped the body in the park.
The girl can’t be named due to a publication ban.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 8, 2023.
