HUNTER: Questions persist in kidnapping/potential slaying of Elnaz Hajtamiri
· Toronto Sun
There were always nagging questions about the brazen abduction of Elnaz Hajtamiri.
Right out of the gate on that snowy night in January 2022.
Visit playerbros.org for more information.
Some of the answers became self-evident, released by cops or unveiled in a Barrie courtroom on Monday. Other sidebars aren’t so clear and we may now never know them unless the man accused of being the mastermind behind her abduction in the middle of the night and an earlier beatdown flips on his cronies.
Hiding out with relatives
Elnaz Hajtamiri was 37 when she was abducted by three masked people equipped with police gear on Jan. 12, 2022. She was hiding from her former boyfriend, Mohamad Lilo, 38, of Montreal.
OPP detectives launched an unprecedented hunt for Hajtamiri but found no trace of her. She is believed to have been murdered.
On Monday, Lilo pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kidnap Hajtamiri in exchange for the first-degree murder charges against him being dropped by the Crown. The Crown and defence offered up a joint proposal of a four-year sentence.
Last June, he was also convicted of aggravated assault in a botched kidnapping attempt and attack on Hajtamiri.
But here’s where it gets complicated. Over time, OPP and York Regional Police detectives arrested 11 people.
When Lilo was arrested, cops described it as a domestic situation that came off the rails. Hajtamiri had dumped Lilo several months before and court heard he was jealous and angry. And obsessed enough to have his ex-girlfriend followed.
Overkill for a domestic beef
Cops say he enlisted 10 men and women for the botched kidnapping and assault in the basement garage of her Richmond Hill condo and later kidnapping from Wasaga Beach.
But as I pointed out at a YRP news conference on the Richmond Hill attack, 10 people seemed like overkill for what had been framed as a matter of the heart. Well, the news conference ended without answers.
For Lilo, there may have been some animosity towards his ex-girlfriend but it appeared that something deeper, more sinister was unfolding.
As I first reported in the Toronto Sun , two of the alleged thugs who attacked Hajtamiri a month before she was abducted, Harshdeep Binner, 23, and Riyasad Singh, 22, were neck deep in an Edmonton stolen truck ring. The group targeted Ford F-150 trucks that sold for around $48,000 retail at the time.
Organized crime? You bet!
Oddly, Lilo was in the shipping business, providing ocean-going containers.
Remember the pricey vehicles being boosted off our streets? The scam was that the hot vehicles were shipped to the Irish mob-controlled Port of Montreal. Then it was bon voyage! Most of the vehicles were shipped to Dubai, UAE and other Middle Eastern destinations.
“It’s not a domestic incident, that’s not what it’s about,” one law enforcement source alleged. “It’s about stolen trucks being shipped to Africa and the Middle East by a criminal gang.”
Now, the Sun ‘s initial suspicions have been confirmed.
Did Elnaz Hajtameri know too much? Anything written here is conjecture, but the stolen vehicle angle is the frontrunner as the motive for her disappearance and murder.
Was Elnaz murdered, and if so, who ordered the killing?
Hajtamiri worked for Lilo and his business was facilitating the export of stolen vehicles. In court on Monday, it emerged that Lilo’s “associates” were uncomfortable when the couple split.
She was viewed as a liability and someone who needed to be taken off the board. His cronies feared she was going to go to the cops and turn canary and they were willing to cough up an estimated $50,000 to watch her.
The question now is, who are these people? Will they be brought to justice and did Lilo make a deal to rat them out?
As I said, $50,000 is a lot of money to blow on a broken heart.
On X: @HunterTOSun
RECOMMENDED VIDEO