“Allah naharisto.”Kabil Abdulkhadir wanted bygones to be bygones when he told Mohamud Dirie the Somali phrase, meaning “may your brother rest in peace,” at a downtown Toronto nightclub in August 2015.Dirie’s older brother, Mohamed Dirie, known as “Beetlejuice,” had been shot dead in a short-term rental near Liberty Village less than two months earlier.But the younger Dirie, known as “Monopoly,” wasn’t interested in making peace with Abdulkhadir.Instead, he shrugged his shoulder dismissively.Within hours, Abdulkhadir, 27, was lying dead outside the Marriott Hotel on Bay St., killed by five bullets fired from Dirie’s pistol.Abdulkhadir had lived in fear of the brothers over the course of a six-year beef.That ended with his death.Last summer, a jury convicted Mohamud Dirie of first-degree murder in Abdulkhadir’s death. This past week, a different jury in the same Toronto courthouse acquitted another man in the murders of Mohamed Dirie and Abdiweli Abdullahi, who was shot to death while he slept.A younger Dirie brother, Ahmed, is one of four co-accused facing multiple charges for allegedly shooting an innocent man more than 30 times last summer in a housing complex parking lot near Jane St. and Finch Ave. The brothers first came to public attention in 2013, when Ahmed and Mohamed Dirie were rounded up as part of Project Traveller, the Toronto police investigation into the Dixon City Bloods. That wiretap project infamously exposed the street gang’s ties to former mayor Rob Ford, including members’ attempts to peddle a video of him smoking crack cocaine.At the time, northwest Toronto was plagued by violence, prompting Toronto police to form a Somali Liaison Unit in an effort to rebuild trust with the community. (It has since disbanded)Amid the violence, Abdulkhadir’s fear only intensified after elders in the Somali community said he had killed Mohamed Dirie, according to evidence ...
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