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 – Members of a B.C. Supreme Court jury have asked the judge in the Ibrahim Ali murder trail for a clearer definition of the differences between manslaughter and first- and second-degree murder.
The question came shortly after the jury began its deliberations in the first-degree murder trial of Ali, who’s accused of killing a 13-year-old girl in a Burnaby park more than six years ago.
Justice Lance Bernard has prepared a two-page answer he plans to give the jury today after both the Crown and defence have had a chance to view the response.
They jury began deliberating late yesterday after what was scheduled to be a three-month trial stretched into its ninth month.
Some details of the case can only now be reported because the jury is sequestered, including that Ali’s defence team received threats, with lawyer Kevin McCullough reading out one that said his family faced “a violent and brutal death” before Christmas.
In his instructions to the jury, 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.
