Through his barrister, Farhad Qaumi mounted a vigorous defence of his actions, telling the court he needed to attack Little Crazy pre-emptively to save his own life.

“Farhad did not have to wait until he was shot at to take action against what he believed was a genuine threat,” said John Stratton SC, who attacked the credibility of the informants, many of whom painted Farhad as the devil and claimed they never signed up for the criminality thrust upon them.

“They weren’t joining the Blacktown Lawn Bowls society,” he said.

Javad’s barrister, Ronald Driels, a man with long grey curls and a cockney accent (despite an upbringing in Queensland) summed up his client’s case in simple terms, telling the court he simply wasn’t present when Mahmoud Hamzy was killed on October 29, 2013.

His only charge — the murder of Hamzy — didn’t stack up against the evidence against him: some cell tower records placing him near the crime scene and the word of rollover witnesses who, eventually, identified Javad at the shooting. One of these rollovers was Ario, the childhood friend of Javad; he originally lied to police and said someone else had been in the car that night.

Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on his charges, suggesting credibility with informants might have been a problem.

They were deadlocked, too, on Mohammed Kalal, the only Lebanese member of Blacktown BFL. He was charged over the shooting outside Masood Zakaria’s home at Blacktown, which injured a 14-year-old girl, and the separate shooting of “Abs” and his two friends at the Chokolatta Café at Bankstown three days later.

Kalal’s barrister, Jeff Clarke, mounted a duress argument on behalf of his client, telling the court that Kalal was a low-ranking lackey who committed the violence on the threat of death.

Clarke used the ballistic evidence from each crime scene to argue that in both shootings Kalal had deliberately aimed high or off to the side to minimise the chance of injury. Those caused to the girl at the Zakaria house, Clarke said, were an unintended accident.

“Why would he willingly take part [in these attacks]?” Clarke argued, pointing at Kalal in the dock, reiterating his low-level standing in the group’s hierarchy. “I say this with the greatest respect to my client: he’s a nobody.”

Jamil was the only Qaumi brother to take the stand during the hearings, appearing neatly dressed in a sharp navy suit during each day of his evidence. The only giveaway of his criminal lifestyle were the numbers ‘187’ tattooed behind his left ear, a reference to Section 187 of the Californian Penal Code defining the crime of murder. Jamil said he’d gotten the tattoo in prison and didn’t know what the numbers meant.

He admitted firing shots during the attack at Revesby Heights but said his motive was to scare people, not to murder anyone. He blamed Ario for the actual killing of Mahmoud Hamzy.

“I started shooting towards the floor at his [Hamzy’s] legs. [Ario] kept moving closer,” he said, an answer that was closely examined during the Crown’s closing arguments.

Ballistics had linked Jamil to six shots fired that night. “That’s not a warning, that’s an execution,” said Crown Prosecutor Ken McKay.

The verdicts were finally handed down on the morning of November 11, 2016, the jury finding all three Qaumi brothers guilty of conspiracy to murder, solicit to murder, shoot with intent to murder, and several counts of committing grievous bodily harm in relation to the Odisho and Zakaria shootings.

They were also found guilty of handling various firearms, supplying commercial quantities of drugs and directing a criminal group.

The only silver lining for Qaumi was that jurors found him and his brothers not guilty of murdering Mahmoud Hamzy, but guilty of manslaughter instead.

He clasped his hands together in response and mouthed the words “thank you” to his solicitors from Archbold Legal.

Despite the possibility of decades in prison, he is not, officially, a murderer.

Speaking from prison via his lawyers, Qaumi is defiant.

“I’ve never had to take another soul unless it was in self-defence,” he said. “I’m not a cold-blooded killer, it’s not who I am. I don’t wish death on anyone because there is no coming back from that.

“I’ve found myself in unfortunate circumstances and a pre-emptive strike is instinct. War was declared on me and in my mind, I had to kill or be killed.”

Top video: Detective Glen Browne talking to BFL members Ramin and Pouria after their arrest, 2014.