Grinning for the camera while holding a sign supporting her beloved American football team, the woman hardly looks like an assassin – let alone one operating in the UK.
Yet Aimee Betro, 45, was found guilty on Tuesday of travelling 4,000 miles from her Wisconsin home to carry out a ‘hit’ on a man in Birmingham.
Extraordinarily, the naive American received no payment for the shooting despite apparently struggling for money.
Her motive? She was prepared to kill for love after becoming infatuated with a British petty criminal she met through a dating app.
Betro, wearing a niqab to disguise herself, pointed a gun at her victim’s head outside his home in Yardley and pulled the trigger.
The pistol jammed, allowing her target, Sikander Ali, 33, to flee. But Betro wasn’t finished, returning hours later to fire three shots through the windows of his home. Police said it was only by chance no one was killed.
After the botched hit in September 2019, Betro returned to the US before going on the run in Armenia until the Daily Mail tracked her down in June last year and told the police of her whereabouts, leading to her arrest and return to the UK for trial.
She denied all charges, telling her trial it was a ‘terrible coincidence’ she was around the corner six minutes after the shooting and it must have been another ‘fat American woman’ who bought the Mercedes used in the attack.
Fan: Aimee Betro holds a sign supporting American football’s Green Bay Packers
Besotted: Aimee Betro travelled from Wisconsin to meet her lover in an Airbnb in London
American citizen Aimee Betro, 45, attempted to murder a Birmingham clothing shop owner as part of an international assassination plot before leaving the country and going on the run
Indeed, wearing a summer dress and flip-flops, Betro looked more like a relaxed tourist heading to the beach than a determined assassin in CCTV footage from after the attempt on Mr Ali’s life.
But jurors at Birmingham Crown Court on Tuesday found her guilty of conspiracy to murder, meaning the full story of how the American became caught up in a feud between two rival families in the Midlands can now be told in full for the first time.
Betro showed no emotion as the verdicts were delivered, and her friends were unable to explain how she became embroiled in the bizarre murder plot.
One told the Daily Mail she was the ‘last person’ they’d pick to kill someone, although another hinted at motivation when he said: ‘She’s either got brainwashed in some romance thing or she’s been framed… it would be completely out of character.’
Betro was born in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and her mother Jeanne Johnson, 64, and father Steven Betro, a convicted methamphetamine dealer, separated when she was young. She attended Stevens Point Area Senior High School and went on to study early childhood education at Mid-State Technical College in Wisconsin.
A series of low paid jobs followed her graduation. She then worked as an administrator, selling tickets for her beloved Milwaukee Brewers Major League Baseball team.
She lived a relatively normal existence until September 2018, when she met someone on a dating app who went by the name ‘Dr Ice’. That man was Mohammed Nabil Nazir, now 31, from Derby.
Betro was apparently smitten and soon began planning a two-week trip to the UK. She arrived in London on Christmas Day 2018, staying in an Airbnb in King’s Cross and other hotels across the capital – although it is unclear how she funded the visit.
Jammed: CCTV footage of the moment Betro’s gun failed to fire when carrying out the ‘hit’
Clue: A casing at the scene that identified the rare pistol used in the the attempted assasination
Quizzed by her barrister Paul Lewis KC, she described how she did typical ‘tourist stuff’ – but also met Nazir, who is more than ten years her junior, for the first time when he visited her at the Airbnb and spent the night with her.
It was the only time they ever slept together but it seems this encounter was all it took to turn Betro into a would-be hitwoman the following year.
For Nazir, a petty drug dealer and ‘businessman’ was also a ‘cunning and calculated criminal’ involved in a bitter feud with another family, sparked by a row at the Seher bridal boutique in Birmingham owned by Aslat Mahumad.
A fight in July 2018, over the price of a suit Nazir and his family believed was in the sale, left his taxi driver father Mohammed Aslam, 57, seriously injured, and Nazir ‘hell-bent’ on revenge.
He set about plotting to kill Mr Mahumad or members of his family and convinced Betro to take part.
So in August 2019 she flew to the UK again, arriving at Manchester airport from Atlanta before taking a train to Birmingham airport, where she hired a car – apparently at Nazir’s request – and set off to see him in Derby.
When she arrived, he took over driving the car and within minutes was in a collision with two vehicles – one driven by his father and the other by a woman he knew, both of whom later received insurance payouts.
The court heard that far from being an unfortunate coincidence, the crash was part of an insurance scam orchestrated by Nazir, who fled the scene while Betro was on the phone to the AA, claiming she had been the one driving.
Mohammed Aslam, 56, who along with his son, was jailed at Birmingham Crown Court for hiring a hijab-wearing female assassin to carry out a gun attack on a rival family
Both men orchestrated the attack on September 7 2019, in which Sikander Ali was threatened with a gun. Pictured: Mohammed Nabil Nazir, 30
It is not known if the other two were aware of the scam but prosecutor Tom Walkling KC said Betro was well aware, with the plot being evidence she was in love with Nazir and ‘happy to break the law if that is what he wanted’.
Mr Walkling asked Betro: ‘Do you think with hindsight that Nazir was taking advantage of you?’
She replied simply: ‘I don’t know.’
After the crash, she checked into a hotel in Derby hoping to spend the following day – her birthday – with Nazir, but he said he was too busy and so she spent it wandering the city alone.
Mr Walkling asked: ‘Are we right in thinking you had gone to Derby for your birthday just to see Mr Nazir because you loved him?’ She replied: ‘Yes’. Mr Walkling went on: ‘Were you still in love with Mr Nazir given how he had treated you [after the crash]?’ Betro answered: ‘I still cared for him, yes.’
Days later, she checked into the Rotunda hotel in Birmingham using a fake name and tried to lure shopowner Mr Mahumad into meeting her on the pretence of buying a car he was selling.
When that failed, she bought a second-hand Mercedes and drove to Measham Grove, in the Yardley area of Birmingham, where Mr Mahumad lived with his family, including his son, Sikander Ali.
CCTV footage captured the moment Betro pulled up outside the home, where moments later Mr Ali arrived in a black SUV. Betro got out of the car and approached him with her gun drawn. She pulled the trigger but the weapon jammed, giving Mr Ali the chance to jump back into his car and speed away.
CCTV footage shows Aimee Betro in Birmingham following the attempted shooting of Sikander Ali in September 2019
Mr Walkling said the ‘would-be assassin’ tried to disguise her appearance by wearing a niqab or ‘what looked like a burka’ – traditional clothing worn by Muslim women to cover themselves. He told jurors she was ‘not deterred’ and ‘returned to the same address a few hours later, using the now-working gun to shoot three bullets through the bedroom windows of the family home.
Betro flew back to the US the following day with Nazir flying out to join her three days after.
They visited various places, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and the military base at Area 51 in Nevada – which is at the centre of numerous conspiracy theories involving extra-terrestrial life and UFOs.
Betro told jurors she did not even know there had been a shooting in Measham Grove and Nazir had not mentioned it during his time in the US, which ended in mid-October when he flew to Gatwick and was arrested.
He and his father were jailed last year, both found guilty of conspiracy to murder but with Nazir also convicted of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and doing acts intending to pervert the course of justice. He was sentenced to 32 years while Aslam was jailed for ten.
But Betro evaded authorities for five years – despite an international warrant for her arrest – until she was tracked down to a bolthole in Armenia thanks to investigations by the Daily Mail. Informing West Midlands Police of her location, the Daily Mail agreed to a news blackout until she was arrested to avoid her fleeing again before she could be extradited to the UK for trial.
While giving evidence, she claimed it was ‘another American woman’ who booked taxis after the shooting and denied any involvement. But her DNA was found on a glove in the Mercedes and the gun used was a rare American Hi-Point C9 pistol – which has not been seen by experts in this country before or since the attempted murder. Police still do not know how she got the gun – it was never recovered and was only identified by ballistic experts.
The prosecution raised the possibility of it being smuggled from the US, but did not know exactly how.
Aimee Betro caught on CCTV checking into a Birmingham hotel following the shooting
Three shots were fired into the two upstairs bedrooms of the property on Measham Grove, Acocks Green
Because Betro was extradited under a ‘red notice’ (a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and arrest a person) she was immediately charged and remanded in custody rather than being first arrested and interviewed, meaning she was never questioned by police.
Meanwhile, Nazir gave only ‘no comment’ answers during his police interview. The pair also communicated largely by Snapchat, where messages disappear after being sent, so what they discussed may never be revealed.
Nazir and his father’s bank records were examined and found to have no evidence of payments to Betro. In fact, she had even paid for Nazir’s return ticket to the US after the botched hit.
Detective Chief Inspector Alastair Orencas from West Midlands Police said her motivation was that she was ‘in love or infatuated with him’ and that it was only through luck or incompetence that Mr Ali was not dead.
‘It would have been a point-blank discharge of a self-loading pistol,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt whatsoever that if that gun had discharged at that point he would have died. It strikes me that it was a well-planned, persistent murderous attempt to take someone’s life.’
He said she was ‘on the face of it, a normal-looking individual [but] prepared to do an outrageous, audacious and persistent murder’.
Nor was her involvement ‘off-the-cuff madness’ but pre-planned with others across continents, he added. ‘I think [she] has had a somewhat problematic relationship with the truth in not accepting what she was accused of.’
But he said Betro’s use of a niqab to hide her face ‘didn’t work very well’ as ‘the footwear didn’t change, phones didn’t change’ and various CCTV cameras caught her in the area of the shooting.
Betro pictured walking down a street in Birmingham following the attempted murder
Such was her infatuation that Betro continued to help Nazir even after the failed murder plot, posting ammunition and gun parts to another one of his rivals, former business partner Faris Quayum, in a bid to frame him.
She was also found guilty of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, and a charge related to posting the gun parts and the ammunition into the UK from a US post office. Her sentencing date is August 21.
Judge Simon Drew said: ‘I suspect Ms Betro would like to know the outcome of this case and there is nothing worse than sitting waiting.’
During her trial, she had to endure a four-hour round trip from women-only HMP New Hall in West Yorkshire, the closest facility to Birmingham that caters for ‘Category A’ women such as her – including serial killer Rose West.
Specialist prosecutor Hannah Sidaway said: ‘Betro tried to kill a man at point-blank range. It is sheer luck that he managed to get away unscathed.
‘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 to execute an attack on a man she did not know.’
Her mother, who had urged Betro to hand herself in, said ‘I’m not interested’ when contacted this week. She too must be left wondering how her daughter, who was ‘no trouble as a child’, has found herself behind bars with some of the UK’s most dangerous criminals.
It’s certainly not the happy love story ending Betro must have hoped for.
