B.C. police secretly took DNA from Kurdish community in tea cup sting to help solve murder: court recordings

Undercover police investigating the murder of a13-year-old girl in British Columbia disguised themselves as teamarketers to secretly collect the DNA of about 150 Kurdish communitymembers, court recordings reveal.

Homicide officers said the DNA was obtained at a 2018 Kurdish NewYear celebration in Burnaby, B.C., where police handed out free teasamples in numbered cups that were later swabbed, in a stingthat identified a brother of the suspect.

That led to the arrest of Ibrahim Ali, who was convicted inDecember of first-degree murder of the girl whose name is protectedby a publication ban.

Ali was in court Monday to fix a date for sentencing, although other applications were heard in the morning. He attended the B.C. Supreme Court hearing by video.

His trial heard DNA on a cigarette butt discarded by Ali matched that of semen in the girl's body, which was found in Burnaby's Central Parkin July 2017.

But the jury was never told why B.C.'s Integrated HomicideInvestigation Team (IHIT) was monitoring Ali, and an application by hislawyers for full information about the operation has been sealed bythe court.

However, The Canadian Press listened to months of courtrecordings of pretrial hearings that reveal details of the secretoperation and its random sweep.

Meghan McDermott, the policy director of the B.C. Civil LibertiesAssociation, said she was "stunned"to hear about the operation,calling it "unacceptable and reprehensible"if police failed toobtain a warrant for it.

"We need judicial permission to do this. You either need thewarrant to do it surreptitiously, or you need informed consent,"she said in an interview.

It's not clear if a warrant was sought or obtained, and policedid not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Premier backs police

Asked about the DNA sweep, B.C. Premier David Eby said he supported police who investigated the murder, and he would "really struggle"with the idea that officers shouldn't have conducted the operation.

Eby told an unrelated news conference on Monday that the victim's rights were "profoundly and unalterably violated"by her killer, and police actions made the community safe from a predator.

Dan McLaughlin of the B.C. Prosecution Service said in an emailFriday that the service "will not be issuing any statements orcommenting on any aspects of the investigation or prosecution atthis time."

Ali's lawyer Ben Lynskey said in one of the pretrial hearingsthat the sting involved the "indiscriminate"investigation ofpeople on the basis of "racial background."

He said there were "massive implications for how the policeconduct investigations and for the Charter-protected interest ofCanadians."

Police testified the sting was launched after DNA from the bodywas determined to have markers consistent with the Kurdish ethnicminority. Homicide investigators zeroed in on the community ofseveral thousand in the Lower Mainland, whose members includerefugees from the Syrian war.

Police had earlier conducted a voluntary DNA sweep of male Kurds,as well as collecting castoff DNA samples, the court heard.

"This is an investigative step that was taken by the police,which allowed the police to direct some greater attention and focus,in a better way, the nature of their investigation,"Crown lawyerDaniel Porte told a pretrial hearing in November 2019.

When that didn't yield a breakthrough, police devised a newplan to obtain DNA without permission:They would secretly collectDNA at a Kurdish New Year celebration, known as Newroz, at Burnaby'sBarnet Marine Park on March 25, 2018, the recordings revealed.

'Taste test of tea'

An RCMP officer explained the operation to the B.C. Supreme Courtin November 2022 calling it an "incentive-based scenario."

"The specific scenario was a taste test of tea,"the officertold the court.

He said officers dressed as market researchers for a tea companyand roamed around the Newroz celebration, offering free samples. Hesaid the participants were also given Tim Hortons gift cards.

"I believe it was a $5 gift card, but I can't be certain on theamount," the officer said.

"The participants [who]elected to participate in this event, [and]it was entirely voluntary, could elect to provide personalinformation which would further give them the possibility of beingentered into some form of contest or sweepstakes. This, again, wasvoluntary."

But participants were never told the tea company was fake and theentire process was designed solely to allow police to obtain theirDNA and identities.

The officer said the cups were "individually and uniquelynumbered"so police could later match DNA on the cups with names onthe contest forms.

Undercover officers would offer to take back the used disposablecup, pretending to throw them away. Instead, the cups were wrappedin a plastic glove to protect against cross-contamination, placed ina garbage bag, then collated in a trailer parked some distance away.

In December 2022, Crown lawyer Porte told the court that 150 cupswere collected at the celebration. Three were duplicates, and of the147 unique DNA samples, 91 were male and 56 female.

He said one of the samples obtained at the Newroz celebrationcame from a man named Shamdan Ali, and RCMP lab testing showedhe shared many genetic characteristics with the DNA of "Male 1,"whose semen was found in the body.

He said Shamdan Ali's DNA was sent to Parabon NanoLabs in theU.S., which had more exacting science than available inCanada. The company determined it likely belonged to a sibling ofMale 1 with "confidence of 99.32 per cent."

Police then identified Syrian refugee Ibrahim Ali as the brotherof Shamdan Ali and began surveillance that later resulted in theseizure of the cigarette butt on Aug. 24, 2018.

The DNA matched Male 1 and Ibrahim Ali was arrested about a weeklater.

Prosecutors told his subsequent trial that Ali had sexuallyassaulted and strangled the girl, and he was convicted on Dec. 8. Hefaces a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for 25years.

'Scary precedent': BCCLA

McDermott, with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said thesting operation was "really concerning,"set a "scary precedent"and will likely affect trust between the Kurdish community andCanadian authorities.

It would be "disingenuous to call this a voluntary collection ofcast-off DNA,"she said of the Newroz operation.

"There can be creative solutions to finding a needle in ahaystack or looking for people who have done criminally abhorrentthings,"she said. "Our system can accommodate these brilliant,creative solutions if they're properly balancing all of the rightsinvolved."

Bashir Abdali, who founded the group that organized the festival, called the police operation a "violation" of human rights.

Abdali, founder of Kurdish House, which organized the Barnet Marine Park festivities, said he was unaware of the police operation until The Canadian Press approached him for an interview on Monday.

He spoke partly in Kurdish, with his remarks translated by Ismat Simo, founder of the Kurdish Canadian Society.

Abdali said the Kurdish community will "absolutely not be happy" to hear about the operation. "It's a violation of their human rights and their right to freedom being Canadian," he said in a translated comment.

However, Eby argued that the murder had "shattered" parents' sense of safety in the province.

"The police went out, identified the suspect, arrested him and he was successfully prosecuted,'' said Eby.

"To now, after the trial is complete, after these issues have all been considered, to be going back to say to the police [that]they should not have done what they did? I really struggle with that analysis,"he said.

Ali's lawyers filed a notice of appeal on Dec. 11, which claimedthe court "erred in its consideration of the defenceabuse-of-process application in respect to the police collection of,and investigation into, the appellant's DNA."

During pretrial hearings, Ali's lawyer criticized the stingoperation and the targeting of the Kurdish community.

"The only way to advance the lead without other investigationalinformation is to do what the police did in this case, which is toindiscriminately investigate every person from the same racialbackground,"Lynskey said during a disclosure application inJanuary 2022.

"The defence will be challenging whether this technology canreliably do what it purports to do and whether it should be used,"he said.

"We will also be challenging the effect of the use of thistechnology on the police investigation and whether it led to themexploiting the vulnerability of the Kurdish population to advancethe investigation."

Justice Lance Bernard ruled against the abuse-of-processapplication in December 2022.

Ali's defence lawyers did not immediately respond to requests forcomment.