An American woman disguised in a niqab whose gun jammed in a failed assassination plot has been jailed for 30 years.
Aimee Betro tried to shoot shop owner Sikander Ali at point-blank range outside his home in South Yardley, Birmingham, in September 2019.
Earlier this month jurors at Birmingham Crown Court found the 45-year-old graphic design and childhood education graduate guilty of conspiracy to murder, possessing a self-loading pistol and fraudulently evading the prohibition on importing ammunition.
Betro, who is originally from West Allis, Wisconsin, but lived in Armenia until earlier this year, took part in a plot orchestrated by co-conspirators Mohammed Aslam, 56, and his son Mohammed Nabil Nazir, 31, to attack a rival family.
Betro showed no emotion as Judge Simon Drew KC jailed her on Thursday for 30 years, with concurrent sentences of six years for possessing a firearm and two years for evading the prohibition.
He said: “You went beyond simply reaching an agreement to kill and, in reality, you did intend to kill Mr Ali. It is only a matter of chance that Mr Ali wasn’t killed. You were engaged in a complex, well-planned conspiracy to murder. You were prepared to pull the trigger and did so on two separate occasions.”
Betro’s three-week trial heard that she met Nazir online in late 2018 and then communicated with him on Snapchat before flying into the UK on Christmas Day. She told the court she slept with Nazir at an Airbnb in London before returning to the US in January 2019.
On a two-week follow-up visit in May 2019, Betro told the court she did not see Nazir, instead visiting a friend in Birmingham and staying at “someone's house in the middle of England to take care of their dog”.
Records show that she landed at Manchester Airport on a flight from Atlanta on August 22 2019, 16 days before the attempted killing of Mr Ali.
Betro was caught on CCTV at and near the scene of her failed attempt to shoot Mr Ali, who fled in his car after her gun jammed. She had waited in a Mercedes car for around 45 minutes for Mr Ali to arrive, then used a “burner” phone to send Mr Ali’s father messages reading “Where are you hiding?” and “Stop playing hide and seek, you are lucky it jammed”.
Security camera footage also captured Betro’s return to the scene hours later, when she aimed three shots through two windows at Mr Ali’s family home. The damaged Mercedes was later found dumped, leading to the discovery of a black glove with Betro’s DNA on it.
Betro told the court she had flown into the UK to celebrate her 40th birthday and knew nothing of any shooting or plot by the time she returned to the US. She also claimed that the woman caught on CCTV wielding a gun and recorded booking taxis was “another American woman” known to Nazir, who had a similar voice and footwear.
Nazir was jailed for 32 years in November 2024 for offences including conspiracy to murder, and Aslam was sentenced to 10 years. The men, both from Derby, denied any wrongdoing but were convicted after a trial at Birmingham Crown Court.
Addressing Betro, Judge Drew said: “So far as you are concerned, clearly you had a leading role. I accept that Nazir recruited you, but you were the gunwoman. You were the person who was prepared to fire the gun. As a result, you showed that you were willing to carry out the killing yourself. Furthermore, this was a conspiracy to murder more than one person."
Defending, Paul Lewis KC said Betro would find custody in the UK difficult, and he urged the judge to give her credit for the 198 days she had spent on remand in Armenia awaiting extradition before her trial.
He said: “She has apparently been a model prisoner on remand. She is likely to find incarceration particularly difficult because all her family and friends are in America and she has had very few visits except for her lawyers.”
Addressing Betro, Judge Drew said: “I take into account your antecedent history, your age, the fact that you will serve some or all of your sentence in a UK prison, far away from home, and the contents of your letter in which you express remorse for your actions.”
