Murder arranged ‘to send a message,’ prosecutors say

Mississauga man accused of trying to protect reputation in 2020 killing

A Mississauga man arranged a 2020 murder to protect his reputation as the head of a “sophisticated” GTA cannabis operation, prosecutors say.

Mahmoud Al-Ramahi took pride in being the leader and owner of the mobile cannabis distribution business Sickspensary, assistant Crown attorney Veronica Puls said in her closing remarks before Superior Court Justice Fletcher Dawson in a Brampton court on Monday.

It was a “large and sophisticated criminal enterprise and he was situated at the top as a boss,” she said.

Al-Ramahi, who was 29 at the time of his arrest, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder for allegedly arranging the murder of Abdifatah Salah, 25, “to send a message.”

At trial, several Peel police officers testified to finding Salah, 25, lying next to a pool of blood on the front stoop of a unit at a townhouse complex on Huntington Ridge Drive, near Mavis Road and Eglinton Avenue West, on Aug. 3, 2020.

Salah’s mother cradled his body while several of his siblings stood nearby, the trial has heard.

Salah was shot once in the head by an unidentified shooter who has never been caught. The Crown claims the gunman fled the scene in a car that was left waiting on Mavis Road, which runs adjacent to the townhouse complex.

Salah later died in hospital.

In her closing remarks, Puls outlined the Crown theory that Al-Ramahi arranged the killing in a series of police-intercepted conversations after a Sickspensary driver was robbed.

Al-Ramahi’s lawyer Craig Bottomley said the Crown is “grasping at straws” with its interpretation of the intercepted conversations, which sometimes have blotchy and unintelligible audio. The case falls “well short of the high standard” of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, he said, noting the Crown case did not identify a shooter, find a murder weapon or produce witnesses to the shooting.

Al-Ramahi had been under police surveillance in a larger probe months before Salah’s killing and many of his conversations were recorded in the weeks leading up to the shooting.

In phone conversations and audio captured from devices planted by police in his car and at a Toronto address, the trial heard him bragging about the growth of his cannabis business and keeping tabs on employees.

In one July 29, 2020, intercept, Puls said, Al-Ramahi can be heard fuming over the violation of the robbery — “We have to send a message,” he said at one point, “shoot him in his face.”

That conversation marks the beginning of a “successfully executed plan” that ended a few days later when Salah was fatally shot with one bullet to the head, the prosecutor said.

Other police intercepts reveal AlRamahi giving instructions, explaining that the target was a tall Somalian man who had siblings, Puls said.

“Anything Somalian coming out of that house, that unit, give it,” Puls said, quoting one intercepted conversation.

The recordings give “more than ample supporting evidence” that Al-Ramahi arranged, encouraged and planned Salah’s murder, she said.

In one intercept from Aug. 6, 2020, someone can be heard telling Al-Ramahi about Salah’s death in hospital; he responded, “Mission complete,” Puls said.

Al-Ramahi was eventually arrested in November 2020.

Because the Crown has not identified a killer, there is no evidence Al-Ramahi actually spoke to the gunman, Bottomley said.

He said there are other reasonable inferences to be drawn from AlRamahi’s comments and that the prosecution failed to prove that he hatched a plan to kill Salah.

“We don’t know what happened,” he said. “There has to be some evidence of what the plan was.”

Police found eight shell casings at the scene. Upon searching Salah’s home, investigators found a pistol, more than 100 bullets and numerous packets of cannabis they say were linked to Sickspensary.

The case was adjourned until April when Justice Dawson is expected to rule on the verdict.