An American woman accused of being involved in a failed assassination attempt has told a trial she did not have a gun at any time during her visit to the UK.
Aimee Betro is accused of having flown into the country to take part in a plot to attack a rival family of her co-conspirators in Birmingham.
The 45-year-old, from West Allis in Wisconsin, told jurors she did not know there had been an attempted shooting when she left the UK two days after the shootings in September 2019.
She denies conspiracy to murder, possessing a firearm with intent and the illegal importation of ammunition.
Prosecutors said she hid her identity using a niqab when she tried to fire shots in Measham Grove, Yardley. But her gun jammed allowing her intended victim to get away.
Jurors have been told Ms Betro was part of a plot orchestrated by co-conspirators Mohammed Aslam, 56, and his son Mohammed Nabil Nazir, 31, from Derby, to attack a rival family.
Ms Betro told defence barrister Paul Lewis KC she was in Birmingham city centre at the time of the attempted assassination and was with friends at the time of the secondary shooting at the intended victim’s house hours later.
She also maintained that a woman described as having an American accent and being small and fat, who bought a vehicle linked to the plot, was not her.
She denied the prosecution’s claim that Nazir or his father got her involved in a plan to kill, and that she was the person who actually wielded the gun.
She added that she did not have possession of a gun at any time during the night of 7 September into the early hours of 8 September 2023, when three shots were fired at a house in Measham Grove after a woman arrived there in a taxi.
The court heard father and son Aslam and Nazir were involved in a feud with intended victim Sikander Ali’s father, Aslat Mahumad.
Nazir and Aslam had been injured during disorder at Mr Mahumad’s clothing boutique in Birmingham in July 2018, jurors have been told, leading them to conspire to have someone kill him or a member of his family.
Nazir was sentenced to 32 years’ imprisonment and Mohammed Aslam was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to murder back in November.
The trial continues.
