Salim Mehajer wants bail varied so he can have access to his mobile phone ‘fearing for his safety’
Disgraced Sydney businessman Salim Mehajer is seeking legal access to a mobile phone because “his safety is paramount” and prison officers had intelligence there was a $250,000 bounty on his head, his lawyer says.
Disgraced Sydney businessman Salim Mehajer has a $250,000 bounty on his head and needs access to his mobile phone because he is in fear for his life, a court was told on Wednesday.
Seeking legal access to a mobile phone because “his safety is paramount”, his lawyer said prison officers had intelligence that there was a $250,000 “hit’’ out on Mehajer.
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The former Auburn deputy mayor — who was released from jail this week after 11 months inside — applied for a number of bail variations in Parramatta District Court yesterday. This included access to one phone, the ability to live at home without his mother and a lift on his prohibition from social media, particularly Instagram. Mehajer’s solicitor Zali Burrows said “one of the most concerning things” justifying the phone use was a previous break-and-enter at Mehajer’s Lidcombe home and a report that Silverwater corrections officers “had intelligence there was a $250,000 bounty — that was a hit — on him”. She tendered a June 2018 article published by the Daily Mail and told Judge James Bennett the bounty was not something the “journalists … would just make up”.
Mehajer’s younger sister, Mariam “Mary” Mehajer, provided an affidavit indicating the family communicate with each other through social media.
Under questioning on Wednesday, she said contacting her brother via a landline phone or email would be inadequate.
“I do believe that communication should be instant and it should always be available,” Ms Mehajer told the court.
Mehajer — who still considers himself a property developer — was released from Cooma Correctional Centre on Tuesday morning after serving 11 months behind bars for electoral fraud.
Ms Burrows said Mehajer also wanted his bail varied so he could leave the state as he had fresh legal proceedings in Cooma and would need to drive through the ACT.
The trip was “roughly” seven hours by road, the lawyer said. NSW Police on Friday charged Mehajer with fraud offences, alleging he nominated another person as the driver of his vehicles which had received infringement notices in 2012 and 2013.
He is facing four counts of making a false declaration and four counts of “dealing in identification information” and is due to appear before Cooma Local Court in July.
Mehajer is additionally fighting allegations he staged a 2017 crash just before he was meant to appear in court over a taxi driver assault.
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