Mohamad Lilo has been found guilty of aggravated assault by a Barrie jury in the frying pan attack on the woman he is also accused of killing, Elnaz Hajtamiri.
Lilo showed little emotion when the jury foreperson pronounced him guilty. Moments later, he glanced toward the eight-man, four-woman jury as they were being individually polled.
Wednesday’s verdict was the latest stop on what has been a circuitous journey through the legal system.
Many more stops are yet to come, but Wednesday was a clear boost for the Crown, which convinced the jury Lilo’s obsession with his former girlfriend drove him to devise a plan to attack her five days before Christmas in 2021 in the underground garage of her Richmond Hill condominium.
Lilo enlisted a gang of thieves and petty criminals to assault his former girlfriend in an apparent attempt to exact revenge for rejecting him.
“He was the architect of that attack,” Crown attorney Mike Flosman told the jury in his closing submission on Monday.
Flosman presented evidence that showed an escalating pattern of stalking the woman who came to Canada from Iran shortly after her husband had died in their shared homeland.
Lilo and Hajtamiri met on a flight between Qatar and Tehran, court heard, not long after she had moved here but was back visiting Iran.
It is the Crown’s belief that incidental meeting proved deadly, but first came the frying pan attack, which Hajtamiri survived with head wounds.
Though a relationship in Canada commenced, she sought to end it two months before the attack, and Lilo could not accept it, court heard.
Flosman showed the jury evidence that included GPS systems being installed on her vehicle, other software monitoring her electronic and digital communications, and generally over-the-top attempts to control his former girlfriend.
Helped along by what Flosman called “morally flexible” private investigators, who were not involved in the assault, Lilo executed an attack on Dec. 20, 2021, though he was not present.
Two other men lay in wait in a stolen car and attacked her with a frying pan.
The jury saw a video that supported the Crown’s theory, but the attack itself was just out of the frame. A passerby, visible in the video, is believed to have interrupted the attack.
The Crown’s evidence took more than a month to present.
By contrast, Lilo’s defence team of Anthony Bryant and Stephanie Marcade declined to call evidence, instead pointing to holes in the case and relying on the high threshold of reasonable doubt to secure a conviction.
The biggest gap was that Hajtamiri was not available to testify. She was kidnapped from a house in Wasaga Beach 23 days after the frying pan attack. She has not been seen since, and police believe she is dead. Lilo was charged with her murder in October 2023.
That first-degree murder trial was supposed to take place at the same time, but the two charges were severed, with a new judge appointed to preside over the aggravated assault case.
“We’ll be in touch,” Bryant could be heard telling his client soon after the verdict on Wednesday.
The next court date is slated for next Thursday, when both sides will try to hammer out a date for the upcoming murder trial, expected to take at least as long as the case that was just completed.
A date for sentencing Lilo for the aggravated assault will also be set at that time.
Lilo remains in custody after twice being denied bail.
Looming over the case is the unofficial 30-month cutoff the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that those facing serious criminal charges must be tried. Strictly speaking, using that 30-month deadline, Lilo’s trial would need to take place by about April 2026 to meet the so-called “Jordan” precedent.
It is believed certain wiggle room exists for the Crown, depending on whether any delays can be put down to the defence.
It will return to the Barrie Courthouse on Mulcaster Street whenever it takes place.
