Mick Hawi’s alleged killer’s unit raided by police just hours before execution
AT 5:30am on the day Mick Hawi was murdered, police lined up inside one of most exclusive addresses in Sydney — and prepared for a surprise raid on one of its residents. In an excruciating turn of bad timing, they’d missed the man accused of murdering Hawi hours later by a matter of minutes.
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AT 5:30am on the day Mick Hawi was murdered, a team of police officers lined up inside the Toaster building — one of most exclusive addresses in Sydney — and prepared for a surprise raid on one of its residents.
Wearing ballistic helmets and Kevlar, the tactical officers burst inside an apartment and searched room-by-room for Ahmad Doudar, a patched member of the Lone Wolf outlaw motorcycle gang.
It was a routine warrant.
The officers — all members of bikie-busting team Strike Force Raptor — found his mobile phone and a gym pass, but, in an excruciating turn of bad timing, they’d missed him by a matter of minutes.
Unbeknown to them, Doudar was allegedly en route to the other side of Sydney, moving getaway cars into place, conducting reconnaissance on a gym, and tracking the movements of Hawi, a former national president of the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang, who would be dead by midday.
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EXECUTION PLAGUED WITH FLAWS
For all of this alleged precision, however, the execution of Hawi was plagued with flaws. Recent arrests in the case have exposed a litany of incriminating loose strands — a trigger-man who allegedly sprayed himself with gunshot residue; a balaclava allegedly left in the footwall of a getaway car; and the very modern phenomena of underworld figures gunning each other down in broad daylight under the obvious gaze of CCTV cameras.
Where the Hawi murder differs to most homicides, however, is how detectives made a start on the alleged killers.
As night fell on February 15, the name Ahmad Doudar was already being whispered to police, courtesy of an anonymous tip and a bit of luck.
By morning, they’d recovered a burned out getaway car allegedly used in the crime — a silver-coloured Mercedes-Benz station wagon, dumped and set alight on Chandler Street, Rockdale, barely a minute’s drive from the gym where Hawi was shot.
TOUGH WORK FOR POLICE
This car would become pivotal to the investigation, the centrepiece of an elaborate exercise in reverse-engineering. For the case to progress, officers needed to trace its origins.
This was by no means glamorous work.
Officers walked for hours along Bay Street and the Princes Hwy, through backstreets and alleyways, a mission to collect hundreds of hours of CCTV footage from houses or businesses and then scan it all for a glimpse of the Mercedes-Benz, somewhere in a frame.
It took nearly 40 police officers 16 painstaking days to assemble this jigsaw puzzle and track that car to a derelict house in Bexley.
On the night of March 3, tactical officers surrounded the premises on Highworth Avenue, approximately 3.5km away from the crime scene, and used a loud-hailer to order its owner — Doudar’s brother — to come outside.
The house was empty, but the subsequent raid provided immediate breakthroughs, like the discovery of a nearby CCTV camera, which crucially revealed that a second alleged getaway car — a Toyota Aurion — had pulled into the driveway 10 minutes after the shooting.
Finding this Toyota would occupy the detectives for weeks; it was long gone by the time of the police raid at Bexley, allegedly recorded two days after the murder being loaded onto the back of a tow truck for transfer to an unknown location.
This meant another round of exhaustive tracking, an effort that would eventually expand and uncover a total of seven cars allegedly involved in the planning of Hawi’s execution.
CAR PROVIDES BREAKTHROUGHS
The eventual recovery of this car, however, would provide most significant breakthroughs — it was located 11km away from the house in Bexley, leaf-strewn and filthy from weeks of sitting in the same location.
Incredibly, a balaclava allegedly used by the shooter had been left behind in the footwell, presumably by accident.
One thing detectives knew about the killer was that he’d leaned in close to Hawi’s car as the shots were fired, an act caught that was caught on camera and likely left him covered in gunshot residue — the hot, powdery discharge usually left on hands and clothes whenever a gun is fired.
Normally this residue evaporates quickly, but given the vacuum-like conditions inside the Toyota, officers decided to send the balaclava for testing.
The result, according to police, came back positive — the hermetically-sealed car had essentially preserved the residue.
But even more significant was the DNA allegedly found inside the balaclava.
Court documents allege that it belonged to a 38-year-old member of the Lone Wolf outlaw motorcycle gang — Yusuf Nazlioglu — who had been living with Ahmad Doudar at the Toaster building.
SUSPECTS LIVED LARGE
Police investigating the murder would spend months watching the men as they partied hard around the CBD and lived large in the Toaster building.
Surveillance officers followed them as they indulged in shopping trips and gym sessions. Allegedly inseparable, Toaster residents also noted some unusual behaviour, including a night where one man danced provocatively on the balcony of the apartment until the other one implored him to cease.
It would take until August 17 before both men were arrested outside a barbershop in Bexley, an arrest prompted by concerns of an imminent trip interstate, the reasons for which detectives won’t reveal outside a courtroom.
Their capture, however, does not mark the end of this investigation.
Even with Doudar and Nazlioglu and another man — Mustafa Salami — the alleged tow-truck driver who moved the Toyota Aurion from Bexley to Beaconsfield — in custody, police believe they’ve only charged the plot’s lackeys rather than its architects.
One person they’re still seeking is the getaway driver, a man with a distinctive limp captured running through the backstreets of Rockdale minutes after the shooting.
Another man, currently in prison, is also of interest to detectives.
But murkiest of all is the motive, a burden for any detective working the walls of silence in an underworld homicide.
BIKIES HIGHLY-FACTIONALISED
Before his murder, Hawi had been notorious for the 2009 Sydney Airport brawl between members of the Comanchero and the Hells Angels.
He’d been in and out of prison, amassed a large number of capable enemies, and at the time of his death commanded a powerful presence around the Shia-Muslim suburbs of Bexley, Kogarah, Arncliffe and Rockdale.
In this insular and highly-factionalised realm, alliances are forged along two faultlines: religion and family heritage.
Those hailing from one particular village in Lebanon tended to align with Hawi, but those originating from a separate village were known to gravitate towards another man currently in prison.
One source described these cliques as diametrically opposed, a bit like the “penguin and the joker” from Batman, they said.
Both Doudar and Nazlioglu hailed from the southern Sydney area. Doudar was not aligned with Hawi, but Nazlioglu, a man of Turkish origin, had been for a period of time, even holidaying and staying with him at his home in Bexley.
Why they eventually fell out isn’t clear — Hawi is strongly rumoured to have chipped Nazlioglu for speaking improperly to a woman, though detectives doubt this theory.
UNOFFICIAL REASON FOR MURDER
Officially they allege that Hawi’s murder was spurred by his attempted extortion of an Arncliffe-based property developer.
According to police, the developer sought help to get Hawi off his back, though it’s unclear if he solicited the murder or merely paid someone more powerful to dissuade Hawi from further standover attempts.
Unofficially, however, investigators are looking elsewhere; they believe it’s possible that senior Comanchero members orchestrated Hawi’s demise, using the extortion details as a cover to have him killed off to avoid a leadership threat.
There are two factors supporting this theory.
One is that Comanchero members still loyal to Hawi had been “doing his numbers” in the lead up to his murder, testing the water for a potential leadership coup.
The second is a 19-minute video recording captured at the Opera House three days before the murder.
The footage depicts Ahmad Doudar, Yusuf Nazlioglu and a third man, Ali Bazzi, one of the highest-ranking Comanchero members in the country (who has not been charged in relation to Hawi’s death), allegedly deep in conversation.
This recording continues to bother detectives.
Even though it’s not unheard of for some gang members to communicate with rivals, a consequence of the frequent patch-overs between groups (members changing gangs), the detectives want to know why two members of the Lone Wolf outlaw motorcycle gang were meeting with a high-ranking Comanchero that night, and what link, if any, it might have with Hawi’s death.
As one underworld source noted, the death of a gang’s national president — including a former one — would usually warrant retaliation.
But it’s been silent for while.
SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
► CHAPTER ONE: Inside the squad that beat Sydney’s gangs
► CHAPTER TWO: The real-life police fight club
