Three plead guilty to Mohammed Abdi murder

The scene of the shooting in Willowbrae. Picture: Neil Hanna

Mohamud Mohamud, 30, Cadil Huseen, 23, and Hussein Ali, 26, pleaded guilty to killing Mohammed Abdi in the Duddingston area of Edinburgh on May 26, last year.

Mr Adbi, who came to Scotland from Somalia as a teenager, was gunned down in what is understood to be a feud over drugs and died from a gunshot wound to the chest.

All three men are now facing life sentences.

Judge Lord Turnbull said: “This is a level of criminality seldom seen in our country and mercifully so.”

Lord Turnbull said that he would have to call for background reports before determining how long the three would spend behind bars before being eligible for parole.

The court heard that the three men and their victim had been friendly, but there was a falling out over the tenancy of a flat which was lost and Husseen known as Jamie was blamed for this.

Things escalated just days before the murder when Huseen’s flat in Gilmerton, Edinburgh, and the flat of Ali, known as Bash, in Captain’s Drive, Edinburgh, were vandalised.

On the night of the killing witnesses spoke of hearing cars chasing each other, a VW Sharan crashing into the fence of a nearby tennis court and then the sound of gunfire.

One man described it as a rat-a- tat sound and the noise was heard in the background of one of the many 999 calls made to the police that night.

Another witness taxi driver Mohammed Irfan, 34, from Edinburgh, said: “I never thought it would be happening here. It was like something you hear in the movies I couldn’t believe it would be shots. I heard three loud bangs, which I found out the next day were shots.

A forensic expert told the court that at least five shots were fire from the converted replica machine gun. Another bullet was fired from a converted revolver found in the VW Sharan, but the bullet which killed Mr Abdi came from the machine gun.

Drugs

Jade Davren, who was a friend of both Huseen and Ali told the court she became suspicious they were involved in drug dealing.

In a police interview she told of Jamie clubbing with “wads of cash,” but when pressed as to how much money she said: “About £200 and added that’s a lot of money to me.”

However she agreed that she had heard that Huseen and his friends were making £15,000 a week from drug dealing.

Another friend of Huseen Jordan Cockburn, 21, told the court she saw what she thought was a lump of cheese on his kitchen table .

She was asked: “What did Jamie tell you it was,” and she replied: “Crack cocaine.”

Co-accused Ahmed Ahmed, 28 , Liban Ahmed – also known as Jama, 30, Said Fadal, 32, and Said Tarabi, 27, had their pleas of not guilty accepted by the advocate depute Iain McSporran, prosecuting.

All seven had been on trial at the High Court in Glasgow for almost four weeks.

The court heard that murder victim Mr Abdi’s Edinburgh home in Buchanan Street was raided by police on May 3, last year, and drugs were found.