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Nobody likes testifying in court, let alone as the prosecution’s star witness at your brother-in-law’s murder trial.

Ottawa’s Ali Abdul-Hussein, an accessory after-the-fact in a 2006 gangland killing, feared his brother-in-law so much that he considered going into the witness-protection program but declined because his brother refused to join him in a new life under a new identity, and far removed from Nawaf Al-Enzi.

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Too afraid to testify against his brother-in-law, Hussein skipped town a month before the 2016 trial and spent time in Thailand, China and Lebanon. Hussein returned to Ottawa days after a jury convicted Al-Enzi of first-degree murder and he was arrested at the airport for obstructing justice.

And on Wednesday, Hussein, 30, was sentenced to three years in prison after being found guilty of thwarting justice. In her sentencing decision, Ontario Court Justice Jacqueline Loignon noted that the countries Hussein lived iin as a fugitive were primarily ones without extradition treaties with Canada.