Grinning for the camera 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 naïve 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 via a dating app.
Betro wore a niqab to disguise her appearance before pointing the gun at her victim’s head and pulling the trigger.
The pistol jammed and target Sikander Ali, 33, managed to flee but Betro wasn’t finished: she returned hours later to fire three shots through the windows of Mr Ali’s home. Police said it was only by chance no one was killed.
In the aftermath of the botched hit in September 2019, Betro returned home to the US before fleeing to Armenia where she remained on the run until the Daily Mail tracked her down in June last year and tipped off police about 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 brought the Mercedes used in the shooting.
Indeed, wearing a summer dress and flip-flops, Betro looked more like a relaxed tourist heading for the beach than a determined assassin in CCTV from after the shooting.
But jurors at Birmingham Crown Court on Tuesday found her guilty of conspiracy to murder, meaning the full astonishing story of how she became caught up in a feud between two rival Asian families in the Midlands can now be told in full for the first time.
Betro, who wore her mousy brown hair in two ‘space’ buns on top of her head throughout her two-week trial, showed no emotion as the verdicts were delivered.
Friends, however, could not explain how she became caught up in the bizarre murder plot.
One told the Daily Mail she was the ‘last person’ they’d pick to kill someone, although another friend, who knew her from the electronic music scene, 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, graduating in 1996, and played competitive disc golf, also known as frisbee golf.
She went on to study early childhood education at Mid-State Technical College in Wisconsin, graduating in 2005. A series of low paid jobs followed. She then worked as an administrator for her beloved Milwaukee Brewers Major League Baseball team, selling tickets.
A relatively normal existence, then, until September 2018, when she met a man on a dating app who went by the name of ‘Dr Ice’. That man was Nabil Mohammed Nazir, now 31, from Derby.
Betro was apparently smitten and soon began planning a solo 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.
Quizzed by her barrister Paul Lewis KC, she described how she did typical ‘tourist stuff’ – but also met Nazir, 13 years her junior, for the first time when he visited her at the Airbnb, where they spent the night together.
It was the only time they ever slept together but it seems this encounter was all it took for Betro to turn would-be hitwoman a year later.
For Nazir, a petty drug dealer and ‘businessman’ was also a ‘cunning and calculated criminal’ who was involved in a bitter feud with another Asian family, sparked by a row in a Birmingham bridal boutique.
The fight in July 2018, over the price of a suit Nazir and his family believed was in the sale, left his father taxi driver Mohammed Aslam, 57, seriously injured.
Nazir was ‘hell bent’ on revenge for the injuries his father sustained in the bloody brawl at the Seher wedding shop, owned by Mahumad Aslat, and set about plotting to kill him or members of his family.
He somehow convinced Betro to take part – and 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 being driven by his father and another by a woman he knew, both of whom later received insurance payouts.
The court heard that far from being an unfortunate coincidence it was part of an insurance scam orchestrated by Nazir and involving Betro. The court heard Nazir fled the scene while Betro was on the phone to the AA, telling them she was the driver.
It is not known if the other two were aware of the scam but prosecutor Tom Walkling said Betro was well aware and the plot was evidence she was in love with Nazir and ‘happy to break the law if that is what he wanted’.
Questioning Betro, Mr Walkling said: ‘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 the day wandering the Midlands city alone.
Mr Walkling said: ‘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.’Just days later, she checked into the Rotunda hotel in Birmingham using a fake name and tried to lure shop owner Mr Aslat out on the pretence of buying a car he was selling.
When that failed, she bought a second-hand Mercedes and travelled to Measham Grove, in the Yardley area of Birmingham, where Mr Aslat 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 gun drawn. She fired but the weapon jammed and Mr Ali jumped back into his car and reversed away at speed.
Mr Walkling KC, prosecuting said the ‘would-be assassin’ tried to disguise her appearance by wearing a niqab – a long garment worn by some Muslim women that covers the face – or ‘what looked like a burka’ – a similar garment that covers the body and face but has a mesh covering the eyes as well.
He told jurors she was ‘not deterred’ and ‘returned to the same address on the same cul-de-sac a few hours later, using the now working gun to shoot three bullets through the bedroom windows of the victim’s home’.
Betro flew back to the US the following day from Manchester Airport. Nazir flew out to join her three days later.
While in the US they travelled around visiting various places including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle as well as a theme park and the notorious US military base at Area 51 in Nevada.
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 States, which ended in mid-October when he flew with Norwegian Air back to Gatwick and was arrested.
He and his father were jailed last year. Nazir was sentenced to 32 years for conspiracy to murder while Mohammed Aslam, 57, was told he would serve 10 years.
But Betro managed to evade 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.
The Mail told West Midlands Police about her location and agreed to a news blackout until she was arrested to avoid her fleeing again before she could be extradited back to the UK for trial.
Giving evidence in her defence during the trial, she had claimed it was ‘another American woman’ who booked taxis in the aftermath of the shooting and she was not involved.
But jurors were told her DNA was found on a black glove in the Mercedes used in the shooting, while a description of a ‘short fat American woman’ given by the man selling the vehicle ‘could not have been anyone else’.
The gun used in the shooting was a rare American Hi-Point C-9 pistol – which has not been seen by experts in this country either before or after the attempted murder. Police still do not know how she got the gun – it was never recovered and was only identified by experts in ballistics.
The prosecution raised the possibility the gun was somehow smuggled in from the US, but did not know how. Betro was known to have posted gun parts through the post on a separate occasion.
Because she 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, so 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 sending – which means what they discussed may never be known.
But the court heard Nazir and his father’s bank records were examined and there was no record of any payments to Betro. In fact she even paid for his return ticket to the US after the botched hit.
Detective Chief Inspector Alastair Orencas, from West Midlands Police’s major crime unit, said her motivation was that she was ‘in love or infatuated with him’. He said 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.’
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.
And such was her infatuation, Betro continued to help Nazir even after the failed murder plot, posting ammunition and gun parts to another of his rivals, former business partner, company director 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.
His Honour Judge Simon Drew KC told Betro she would be sentenced next Thursday, adding: ‘I suspect Miss 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 near Wakefield in West Yorkshire, the closest facility to Birmingham that caters for ‘Category A’ women such as her and where Rose West is locked up.
Her mother, who had urged Betro to hand herself in when on the run, said simply that ‘I’m not interested’ when contacted this week.
She too must be left wondering how her sport-loving daughter, who was ‘no trouble as a child’, has found herself behind bars with some of the country’s most dangerous criminals.
It’s certainly not the happy love story ending Betro must have hoped for.
c.duffin@dailymail.co.uk
