Ali Starts 'New Life' After Murder Case

COLUMBIA, MD—Wael Ali’s family and friends cried as he walked out of the Howard County Detention Center on Monday, declaring he would start a new life.

Outside the jail, he and his mother held a long embrace. He leaned his head against her shoulder, and both cried.

“This is a victory for my family,” Ali said. “This is the start of a new life for me.”

Ali had been jailed since in Septmber, charged with the murder of his identical twin, Wasel Ali, and extradited to Maryland.

Wasel was found dead on a secluded Columbia pathway in August 2007.

On Monday afternoon, prosecutors at a status conference after a March 29. One of Ali’s attorneys, Jason Shapiro, said the jury voted 11-1 in favor of acquittal.

“I’m the happiest person on the whole earth right now,” Ali’s father said outside the courthouse. “I believe in the justice system here, and that justice prevailed today.”

James Dietrich, a senior state’s attorney, said the state has the option of retrying Ali, but officials “don’t foresee anything coming.”

He said there is no plan to pursue the case.

“This seemed like the right thing to do,” Dietrich said. “We thought it was a strong circumstantial case, but it was a . We were always up against that.”

The 14-year prosecutor said he could not remember the last time a murder trial in Howard County resulted in a hung jury.

Shapiro said he and fellow defense attorney David Zwanetz asked prosecutors to re-examine the opinions of the jury.

“We tried to show them, 'Let’s not put (the family) through this again,' ” Shapiro said. "It was courageous of the State’s Attorney’s Office to walk away.”

He said Ali broke down in jail, at one point requiring psychiatric treatment.

Ali “was going to school in Georgia,” Shapiro said. “He was living with his mother. He was helping her run a restaurant they had started. He gets grabbed out of his house in the early morning hours, shackled, handcuffed and brought back to Maryland. He loses his tuition. They lost the family restaurant, and he’s in jail facing a life sentence for the killing of his brother. He fell apart.”

Regarding Wasel’s killer, Shapiro said, “There are some cases that will never be solved.”

“That may be the biggest tragedy involved in this case,” Zwanetz said, “that the killer of Wasel Ali will never be known.”

Outside the jail Monday afternoon, the sky was bright blue, and it was hot enough to be mistaken for August. Wael Ali walked about 200 feet to greet the crowd of friends and family members there to pick him up. He hugged them all. 

“I’m going to finish school,” Ali said, “and just take it day by day and rebuild my relationship with my family and what’s left of my friends.”

For more on the case, see Columbia Patch's previous coverage:

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