An American woman who traveled to the UK to try to assassinate her lover’s business rivals — just for the gun to jam on her — was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison.
Loved-up Aimee Betro, 45, traveled from Wisconsin for the twisted murder plot nearly six years ago in Birmingham, England, to please Mohammed Nazir, a British man she fell for on a dating app.
Surveillance footage caught Betro as she hid behind a full Islamic niqab face covering while waiting in a car — then stepping out to try to shoot her main target’s son, Sikander Ali, as he arrived home, just for the gun to jam.
She came back hours later and fired three shots through the upstairs window, seemingly aiming to kill Ali’s father, Aslat Mahumad, over an earlier fight he had with her lover, according to cops.
She even texted Mahumad, threatening him: “Stop playing hide n seek. You’re lucky it jammed. Who is it? Your family or you? Pick one.”
Betro fled the UK the next day – and remained on the run for five years. She was finally tracked down when she and Nazir tried to frame an innocent British man for the shootings.
Betro, from West Allis, Wisconsin, was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison for her
“leading role” in the twisted September 2019 plot, for which her online lover and his dad are already behind bars.
“You went beyond simply reaching an agreement to kill,” Judge Drew told Betro at sentencing, according to the BBC.
“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,” the judge said.
Betro — her hair in plaits and wearing glasses, a white top and black cardigan — sat expressionless as she was convicted of conspiracy to murder, possessing a self-loading pistol with intent to cause fear of violence, and illegally importing ammunition at Birmingham Crown Court.
Nazir was last year sentenced to 32 years in prison for the failed contract killing, while his dad, Mohammed Aslam, got 10 years.
The pair had feuded with Aslat Mahumad, and all three were hurt in a brawl at the target’s clothes shop a year before the attempted hit, police noted.
Betro had flown twice before to the UK to visit Nazir — in December 2018 and May 2019 — before coming back in August 2019 for the doomed hit.
“It’s by luck that her attempt to kill her target failed, thanks to the jamming of her gun,” Detective Chief Inspector Alastair Orencas of West Midlands Police said.
“While she was passing herself off as a tourist, posting pictures and video of landmarks such as the London Eye while she was here, her real purpose was to commit murder.”
The American convict will serve her prison sentence in the UK, which is likely to be “particularly difficult,” the judge said in sentencing.
“All her family and friends are in America and she has had very few visits except for her lawyers,” Judge Drew said, noting that Betro had expressed “remorse.”
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