Three men have been found guilty of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder in a Mississauga restaurant shooting that killed one and left four injured three years ago.
The 12-member jury delivered their verdict after just over a day of deliberations at the Superior Court in Brampton before Justice David Harris.
The verdict comes after a five-week trial held in the May 29, 2021 shooting at the family-owned Chicken Land restaurant that left Naim Akl, 25, dead and his mother, father, brother, and a delivery driver wounded.
Prosecutors argued Naqash Abbasi from Brampton was the mastermind of the murder plot, while Anand Nath from Mississauga was the gunman, and Suliman Raza, also from Mississauga, was the getaway driver.
Court heard that the men had pledged allegiance to ISIS and were looking to silence Akl because he planned to go to police about their actions.
‘A deadly team’: Crown
“Together, they acted as a deadly team,” Crown prosecutor Brian McGuire said during his closing statement Monday.
Akl worked with the three men at a Mississauga Amazon fulfilment warehouse named TryALinc — set up by Abbasi — until a falling out over a month before the shooting.
As part of the evidence presented, the jury heard a recording of Abbasi berating Akl for quitting the business. Texts sent by Abbasi to the other men were also shown to the jury, calling Akl a “traitor.”
Prosecutors tied many of their arguments to the testimony of their star witness, Mikail Aras, who said he was an acquaintance of the three men.
Aras told the jury the men asked him to pledge allegiance to an ISIS leader at a warehouse meeting two days after the shooting. Aras said the men then confessed the murder plot to him.
Aras testified Abbasi told him Akl was a liability because he knew about the men’s allegiance to ISIS and might go to the police since Abbasi owed him nearly $20,000.
Abbasi’s lawyer called witness’s testimony ‘fabrication’
Adam Newman, who represented Abbasi, argued there was no evidence to prove that other than Aras’s testimony.
In his closing statement Tuesday, Newman called Aras’s testimony “nothing but fabrication and lies,” listing inconsistencies in his testimony compared to his police statement.
For example, while Aras testified he learned of the shooting two days after it happened, he told police he learned of it at his apartment the day after the shooting. Newman said that meant Aras was sheltering a shooter and wanted to hide that in court.
The Crown did not provide evidence to corroborate Aras’s testimony that money from the business was used to fund ISIS. However, one of the men’s phone records showed searches and downloads of extremist content.
Raza’s phone record showed downloads of ISIS propaganda videos and searches related to the ISIS leader that Aras testified the men had pledged allegiance to.
His search terms included: “Glock 43 vs Glock 43X,” “sentences for a getaway driver,” “Islamic dream wife jail,” and “disbelief is worse than killing.” He also texted a man about the price of a gun days before the shooting.
Elliott Willschick, who represented Raza, said his client could not take responsibility for all the searches and that Raza’s phone included non-criminal searches as well.
Aras and Noah Rabbani, who worked at TryALinc as a marketer, testified Nath was in cold sweats and paranoid after the shooting.
Within days, Nath left for Montreal with Rabbani — a trip Abbasi paid for, court heard. An officer testified Nath turned himself in to Montreal police on June 10.
Kendra Stanyon, who represented Nath, said all the evidence against him was “circumstantial” and that it wasn’t “sufficient to convict anyone of being the shooter.”