US woman accused of murder plot claims she flew to UK for birthday celebrations
A trial has heard allegations that Betro disguised her appearance with a niqab when she tried to shoot Sikander Ali at point blank range outside his home in Measham Grove, Birmingham, but the gun jammed, allowing Mr Ali to flee.
Aimee Betro is standing trial at Birmingham Crown Court (PA Archive)
Giving evidence in her defence on Monday, Betro, from Wisconsin, told Birmingham Crown Court she had slept with Nazir at an Airbnb during a visit to the UK spanning December 2018 and January 2019.
Betro, who denies conspiracy to murder, possessing a self-loading pistol and a charge of fraudulently evading the prohibition on importing ammunition, said she did not meet Nazir – who she 'had feelings for' – during a second visit to the UK in May 2019.
In her evidence, Betro said the first two visits had seen her doing 'touristy' things such as attending music events, viewing street art in east London, visiting a friend in Birmingham and taking care of a dog 'at someone's house in the middle of England'.
Asked why she had paid a third visit to the UK, arriving at Manchester Airport from Atlanta around two weeks before the shooting, Betro told jurors: 'To celebrate my birthday and I won tickets for another boat party in London.
'And there was another little festival that was at Crystal Palace that I wanted to go to.'
Betro's barrister, Paul Lewis KC, asked her what she thought of Nazir after meeting him on a dating app, communicating with him via Snapchat and meeting him in London.
Betro answered: 'He was charming and I did like him. He was sweet and I did have feelings for him.'
She told the court 'I would guess so' when asked if she thought Nazir had feelings for her, but added that she was not trying to build a relationship with him because they lived in different countries.
Standing up in the witness box, Betro, wearing a casual round-necked navy blue top and square-rimmed glasses, began her evidence by giving personal details, including her height as being 5ft 5ins.
During her evidence, Betro was asked about messages between her and Nazir which referred to a gun broker website and a silencer.
She said she did not remember the message referring to a broker, but told the court she had posted 'gaming things' relating to an an old gaming system.
She also told the court she had lived at an address in West Allis, Winsconsin, from 2013 to 2019 and had 'a couple of different degrees' in early childhood education and graphic design.
The Crown alleges that Betro returned to the scene hours after the shooting and fired three shots into Mr Ali's house, which was empty at the time, before leaving the UK and flying back to the US the next day.
The court heard father and son Aslam and Nazir, who were jailed last year for their part in the bungled assassination plot, were involved in a feud with Mr Ali's father, Aslat Mahumad.
Nazir and Aslam had been injured during disorder at Mr Mahumad's clothing boutique in Birmingham in July 2018, jurors have been told, leading them to conspire to have someone kill him or a member of his family.
The trial continues.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Can't Look Away review – a harrowing, heartbreaking indictment of social media's ruthlessness
'Tweens are herd animals' and have 'an addicts' narrative', according to internal documents revealed by a Facebook whistleblower to congress, making clear the levels of cynicism and obfuscation the company operates with in its quest to hook young people to its platform. Bad though that is, it's not the worst example in this lucidly laid out and often harrowing indictment of social media's ruthlessness; that would be the proliferation of drug dealers on Snapchat, which the company seems to have to some extent turned a blind eye to in the scramble to expand its user base. Based on the investigative work of Bloomberg journalist Olivia Carville, this film covers the attempts of minnow legal outfit Social Media Victims Law Center to net the sharks of Silicon Valley. It represents a host of families who have suffered heartbreaking losses due to unpoliced extreme online content: children and teenagers who fatally copied auto-asphyxiation or pro-suicide videos, ones who killed themselves after falling victim to sextortionists, or who overdosed after buying off-prescription meds from predatory dealers. The battle here is to overcome section 230, a get-out clause in the 1996 Telecommunication Act that gives social media companies immunity for third-party-generated content. Of course, Mark Zuckerberg was still slurping Slush Puppies back then. Matthew Bergman, the center's founder, twice makes the analogy with cigarette companies, arguing that social media companies knowingly prioritise profit over the health of their users. If the film is clear about this causation and the resulting damage, it is not a given that the team can make a longer leap: from establishing a degree of culpability in individual cases and getting justice and closure for these families, to proving that the tech companies systematically predicate their algorithms on fanning our most negative tendencies and impulses. The big victory here is stopping the Snapchat case being dismissed due to section 230; more of a minor triumph that shows the scale of the mountain, but you have to start somewhere. This is a vital piece of public-interest journalism clearly spelling out what we all vaguely intuited. Can't Look Away is in UK cinemas and on Jolt from 8 August In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@ and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
The Guardian
18 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Children are entering a hellscape': the terrifying film about grieving parents taking on social media giants
In 2020, Amy Neville found her 14-year-old son Alexander dead in his bedroom. He had taken what he thought was an oxycodone pill, bought – according to Neville – from a drug dealer he met on Snapchat. The pill was a fake, laced with fentanyl. Four years later, his mum stood up in the California high school where Alex would have been a student to warn other parents and teenagers about social media. 'We give our kids these smartphones. We let them have these apps. And that is the equivalent of dropping them off in the worst neighbourhood in our area.' Neville is featured alongside other bereaved parents in Can't Look Away, a terrifying new documentary about kids and social media directed by Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz, based on extensive investigative reporting by Bloomberg News journalist Olivia Carville. It follows American families who are filing lawsuits against social media companies and campaigning for stricter legislation; they are represented by the Social Media Victims Law Center, a crusading legal firm run Matthew Bergman, a lawyer so charismatic he could probably play himself in a Hollywood movie. The conversation around teenagers and social media has evolved beyond kids using their phones at the table. In his 2024 bestseller The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt warned of the links between young people's mental health and smartphones. Last month, the technology secretary Peter Kyle apologised for the delay in legislation to keep children safe online. Australia plans to ban social media for under 16s from December. In Can't Look Away, the agony on parents' faces as they tell their stories, and relive the trauma, is hard to watch. Toney and Brandy Roberts filed a lawsuit against Meta over the death of their 14-year-old daughter Englyn in 2020; she killed herself after watching a video of a mock-hanging on Instagram. 'The social media companies know that our children are so vulnerable,' Brandy tells the camera. 'I feel that the only way that they're going to be forced to change is through a lawsuit. So that's why we're joining this fight.' When I talk to the film's directors before Can't Look Away's UK premiere, they do not mince their words. O'Neill says he previously had no idea how extreme the content that children are exposed to on social media is. 'It's so much more than just addiction, or screen time, or wasting time. What young people see is so different because of the algorithms. What they're being fed, what they can't look away from, this is not what they're searching for. Children are essentially entering into a hellscape that adults don't know about.' Algorithms decide what you see on social media, based in part on what you have previously liked or commented on, and how much time you've spent on other posts. If you linger on a piece of content, the algorithm will feed you more of the same. What that means is that teenagers don't have to actively search for harmful material for it to appear in their feed. A 13-year-old girl might look for healthy eating advice and end up down a rabbit hole of pro-anorexia content. 'It can very quickly turn very dark,' says O'Neill. Mason Edens was 16 when he broke up with his girlfriend; normal teenage stuff his mum Jennie DeSerio thought. In his heartache, Mason turned to TikTok, searching for phrases such as: 'My girlfriend broke up with me.' In the film, his mum plays one of the depressing videos that ended up in his feed. It shows a gun in a hand, then an image of blood splatter and the words: 'My hand. My head.' Mason killed himself in November 2022. Jennie doesn't believe that he'd ever searched for the term 'suicide' on TikTok. O'Neill says he was shocked by Mason's feed: 'This is not someone crying. It's not just sad music. It is an image of a gun going into a hand with the exhortation to blow your effing head off. That is not content that a product should be feeding to a child. I think we could all broadly agree on that as a society.' Is it possible, I ask, for the social media companies to filter out harmful content? 'If Meta knows what I want to buy before I buy it, there's no way they can't figure out how to make sure children aren't fed content that demonstrates how to die by suicide.' After screenings of Can't Look Away, the film-makers often ask the kids in the audience if they have ever watched a suicide on social media. 'Almost all the hands go up,' says co-director Peltz. In America, 95% of 13 to 17-year-olds use social media. In 2022, social media companies made an estimated $11bn from advertising directed to under 18s in the US. The longer kids are glued to it, the more billions the companies make, which means there is a huge incentive to design sticky algorithms, says Peltz. 'Why are they feeding children material that they can't look away from? Because it keeps children on their sites for as long as possible. And we know from whistleblowers that that is a business plan. This is not an accident. They are prioritising time on screen over safety.' The film features interviews with such whistleblowers, who say companies have been warned that their products harm children. Arturo Béjar held senior positions at Facebook and Instagram, and became increasingly alarmed by their parent company Meta's own research. In one poll, one in eight 13 to 15-year-olds said they had received an unwanted sexual advance on Instagram in the past week. Béjar emailed his concerns to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and other top executives. He says he never received a reply. Can't Look Away tells the heart-breaking story of Jordan DeMay, a popular, outgoing 17-year-old from Michigan who killed himself after being blackmailed in a sextortion scam. In March 2022, he received a message on Instagram from someone he thought was a girl his own age. After some flirting, Jordan sent her nude photographs. Immediately, the threats started: send money or we'll share the photos with your friends and family. Less than six hours after the first of these messages, Jordan was dead. Sextortion is one of the fastest growing cybercrimes. Peltz is keen to share with parents the advice she has picked up from several professionals about how to protect children. 'Talk to your child. Tell them, 'If this ever happens to you, do not be afraid to come to us.' It's very specific advice that can make a major difference.' Can't Look Away ends with some real-life courtroom drama in Los Angeles. Amy Neville, the woman whose son took the fake oxycodone pill, is the lead plaintiff in a case against Snapchat by parents whose children died or were injured after allegedly buying fentanyl-laced drugs. Their lawsuit claims that Snapchat's design makes it an ideal marketplace to sell illegal drugs, with its disappearing messages that make it difficult for police to trace illegal activity. Another feature is Quick Add, which suggests other users to add. Laura Marquez-Garrett is a lawyer at the Social Media Victims Law Center and explains how it works. '[A dealer will] just find one high school kid in your area. You add them, and then you add all their friends, and then you add their friends.' In a courtroom showdown, Snap Inc's defence relies on a piece of US legislation drafted before Zuckerberg hit puberty. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 has for years acted as a shield (or a get-out-of-jail card, depending on your perspective) protecting social media companies from liability for user-generated content posted on their platforms. In court, Snap Inc's attorney describes the platform as a tech-service provider, like a phone company. You wouldn't sue a phone company if a drug deal was made over the phone. The back-and-forth between the lawyers and the judge is a gripping intellectual tennis match. Peltz tells me that parents often feel powerless. 'But this is not a blame-the-parents situation. Companies need to make the changes so that these sites are responsible and are safe for children to be on. Parents can't be expected to keep up with their children when it comes to digital advances. It's time for these companies to stop blaming parents.' As for teenagers, people can be judgmental, she says. 'I think it's human nature to say, 'Well my child wouldn't buy drugs online.' Or, 'My child couldn't be sextorted.' The answer is that we can all hope that our children won't do things like that. But children are children. We all know about the frontal cortex, that it doesn't get fully developed until your 20s. Children make mistakes. They should be allowed to make mistakes and not have to die as a result.' Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media is in UK cinemas and streaming on from 8 August In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@ and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
ITV News
20 hours ago
- ITV News
Nigel Farage hits back at Jess Phillips' Jimmy Savile comments
Nigel Farage has hit back at Jess Phillips after she suggested the Reform UK leader's pledge to scrap the Online Safety Act would empower 'modern-day Jimmy Saviles'. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Farage said the comments were "sinking to the gutter of politics." It comes after Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said Farage was putting himself on the side of 'extreme pornographers' and people like Savile by opposing the law. Farage said the comparison was "inappropriate" because Savile was "famously never online". He added that he would "love to see effective legislation that protected young children from harmful and dangerous material"; however, he argued the Online Safety Act does not do that, and rather "extends right into the area of free speech". He said he would be "very happy" to engage in a public debate with Phillips over the legislation and "work with them on trying to find a tech solution that works". Under rules that came into effect on July 25 as part of the act, online platforms such as social media sites and search engines must take steps to prevent children from accessing harmful content such as pornography or material that encourages suicide. Writing in The Times, Phillips, the Home Office minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, appeared to accuse Farage of being more concerned about 'clicks for his monetised social media accounts' than children's safety online. She said: 'Farage said it's the biggest threat to freedom of speech in our lifetimes. 'My colleague Peter Kyle said he was siding with modern-day Jimmy Saviles preying on children online.' She said she would like to speak to Farage about 'one of those modern-day Saviles, Alexander McCartney'. McCartney, who posed as a teenage girl to befriend young females from across the globe on Snapchat and other platforms before blackmailing them, 'just needed a computer' to reach his targets, Phillips wrote. Believed to be one of the world's most prolific online offenders, McCartney abused at least 70 children online and drove one girl to suicide. Phillips said the Online Safety Act exists to try to provide a 'basic minimum of protection, and make it harder for paedophiles to prey on children at will'. She said police have told her that paedophile networks use 'normal websites where their parents assume they're safe' to coerce and blackmail young people. 'Perhaps Nigel Farage doesn't worry about that — there's no political advantage in it, and no clicks for his monetised social media accounts. But I do." Her comments echo those of Kyle, who said last week: 'Make no mistake about it, if people like Jimmy Savile were alive today, he'd be perpetrating his crimes online. And Nigel Farage is saying that he's on their side.' Farage demanded an apology from the technology secretary, who refused to withdraw his remarks.
