By Lachlan Abbott and Chris Vedelago
A milk bar linked to underworld figure Suleiman “Sam” Abdulrahim was the target of an arson attack in Melbourne’s west that destroyed an innocent family’s neighbouring business, it can be revealed.
Firefighters rushed to a shopping strip in Glengala Road, Sunshine West, shortly before 6am on Tuesday to find a large blaze engulfing a hardware shop next to the milk bar. The blaze forced residents to flee flats located above the suburban retail strip.
An underworld source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the firebombing was targeted at Abdulrahim, a former Mongols outlaw motorcycle bikie who has reinvented himself as a boxer called “The Punisher”.
He had a stake in the milk bar, which sold illicit tobacco, the source said.
Abdulrahim and properties associated with him have been repeatedly targeted in Melbourne’s year-long “tobacco wars”. An unknown party put a bounty on his head seeking his murder.
Dozens of firefighters on several trucks and using thermal imaging drones needed almost two hours to bring Tuesday’s blaze under control, Fire Rescue Victoria said. An advice message was issued because of the smoke.
The shops burnt out in the attack in Sunshine West.Credit: Eddie Jim
Abdulrahim did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Jim, Helen and Arthur Palioudis were caught in the crossfire of the latest attack targeting Abdulrahim and lost their 44-year-old shop – D&H Hardware.
“I feel sorry for my son because it’s his future,” Jim, 70, said. “It’s all gone.”
Arthur, who grew up in the flat above the shop, felt horrible watching the business burn. Flammable industrial products inside the shop, including turpentine, helped fuel the flames.
“It’s like a family member in my life that’s passed away,” he said. “It’s got its own soul.”
The milk bar linked to Abdulrahim was also destroyed.
The boxer known as “The Punisher” was shot eight times while leaving a funeral at Fawkner cemetery in June 2022. The masked gunmen responsible allegedly fled overseas.
Last month, police advised Abdulrahim against fighting in a boxing match planned for the Furlan Club in Thornbury before the venue was firebombed about 1.50am on February 22. Four hours later, the Emerald Reception Centre in Thomastown, where the post-bout celebrations were to have been held, was razed too.
Former Mongols bikie Suleiman “Sam” Abdulrahim, who reinvented himself as a boxer.Credit: Instagram
“We’ve treated these incidents as linked and that is purely due to persons who’ve engaged with those businesses to undertake events at those places,” Detective Inspector Graham Banks, from Victoria Police’s illicit tobacco taskforce, said at the time.
Abdulrahim was connected to a Moonee Ponds tobacco and vape store that was torched three times last year as Melbourne’s gangland was embroiled in a turf war for control of the lucrative illicit tobacco trade. Abdulrahim is not alleged to be involved in that trade himself.
In Hoppers Crossing on Tuesday, another business suspected of being linked to crime boss Fadi Haddara was also firebombed. Numerous tobacco shops, restaurants and other businesses have been torched as the crime family’s position in Melbourne has been undermined by rising gangland player Kazem “Kaz” Hamad.
Police said at least one attacker started a fire inside the entrance to the two-storey office suite in Forsyth Road before 5am.
Abdulrahim (second from right) next to Waleed Haddara (left) and Fadi Haddara (second from left).Credit: Instagram
“Detectives from Taskforce Lunar will investigate whether the intended target was a tobacco shop inside the premises,” police said in a statement.
Abdulrahim has been close to the Haddara family but was a target of other criminals long before the tobacco wars erupted into public view last year.
He was bashed in the head with a rock in prison in 2019. Police foiled a plot to kill him at a boxing event in May 2022, a month before he was almost shot dead in Fawkner.
In October last year, police were probing whether a blaze at Brunswick’s Power Gymnasium, a gym linked to Abdulrahim, was deliberately lit.
An underworld source previously told The Age: “Sam ‘The Punisher’ has enemies everywhere. He’s pissed off so many people over the years by his habit of jumping from side to side to side.”
Abdulrahim is a former associate of Hamad – the current driving criminal force behind the tobacco wars – but became an enemy after apparently aligning with a rival crew run by convicted murderer and drug trafficker George Marrogi.
Hamad and Abdulrahim fell out intensely amid allegations, revealed in Marrogi’s murder trial and later appeal, that Abdulrahim lured Hamad’s close friend Kadir Ors to a Campbellfield car park where Marrogi shot him dead in September 2016.
John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.