1st-degree murder charges withdrawn in Yusuf Ibrahim homicide case

First-degree murder charges laid against two Ottawa men after the 2015 shooting death of Yusuf Ibrahim have been withdrawna year after they were first laid.

Abdullahi Osman andMohamed Abdi Abdullahi were arrested and charged in June 2015, four months after Ibrahim was found dead.

He had beenshot multiple times in the back, on a couch inside a home on Forestglade Crescent, near Hunt Club and Hawthorne roads, on Feb. 6, 2015.

The charges were withdrawn by the Crown in court on Wednesday and the co-accused were released from jail, where they had been awaiting trial,according to two of the defence lawyers in the case.

The charges werewithdrawn after a "careful and thorough review,"BrendanCrawley,a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Attorney General,toldCBC News in an email.

"The Crown has an ongoing duty to assess the strength of a case throughout a prosecution, and is obligated to withdraw the charges if there is no reasonable prospect of conviction, or if it is not in the public interest to proceed," Crawley wrote.

"Based on the Crown's ongoing assessment of the case, which included a careful and thorough review of the evidence and the applicable law, the Crown concluded that it was no longer viable to continue the prosecution and requested that the charges be withdrawn."

'For a charge like that to be withdrawn is exceedingly rare'

One ofAbdullahi'sdefence lawyers, AnneLondon-Weinstein, said Friday that her client is relievedbut that shecouldn't provide any other details.

"I can tell you that he's extremely relieved, and he's happy to be reunited with his family, but for reasons that I can't get into I can't discuss any aspect of the reasons for the withdrawal," she said.

She called themove"extremely rare."

"Charges are not laid without reason. Police have to have a standard of belief before they can lay a charge, and ... this is the mostseriouscharge in the Criminal Code, and so for a charge like that to be withdrawn is exceedingly rare," she said.

"I'm sure itwasn't done without a great degree ofthoughtfulconsideration on the part of the Crown and the police."

Leo Russomanno, who represented Osman, said Friday that his client is also relieved.

"We were looking forward to defending the charges in court, but Mr. Osman is obviously happy that the Crown has decided to withdraw the charge," he said.