Axel Sidaros, 25, found guilty of attempted murder, arson, after ACT Supreme Court trial
Comanchero Axel Sidaros faces a long jail stint after a jury found him guilty of the attempted murder of the gang’s former Canberra chapter president Peter Zdravkovic.
Canberra Star
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Comanchero bikie Axel Sidaros has been found guilty of taking part in a failed hit job on the gang’s former Canberra chapter president Peter “Concrete Pete” Zdravkovic.
Sidaros’s self-made millionaire parents, Hani and Gehan, appeared devastated as an ACT Supreme Court jury forewoman declared their eldest son guilty of seven of eight charges, including arson and attempted murder.
The jury found him not guilty of a single count of firing a gun into Mr Zdravkovic’s mother’s nearby house.
Sidaros, 25, was one of four masked men who took part in the shooting and arson attack on Mr Zdravkovic’s Calwell home.
The attempt on Mr Zdravkovic's life was prompted by a series of provocative social media posts during a rift in the Canberra chapter of the outlaw bikie gang, culminating in Mr Zdravkovic refusing to hand in his club colours and sending members of a rival faction photos of him burning his Comanchero paraphernalia.
The case against Sidaros was bolstered by confessions he made to a mate in prison, Zachary Froome, after Mr Froome joked that “the worst thing about an attempted murder charge is the attempted bit”.
Sidaros’s two-week trial heard from firearms experts, anti-gang police, crime scene investigators, Mr Zdravkovic and Mr Froome.
Both Mr Zdravkovic and Mr Froome, in the witness box, professed to being unable to remember many parts of what they had earlier told police.
Mr Zdravkovic, who had a finger shot off during the firefight, said he could not remember how he lost his digit, and that a friend had told him he lost it in a dog attack.
Mr Zdravkovic was naked in the shower when Sidaros and his three unknown accomplices stormed his house, prompting him to fetch a rifle he had stashed in his roof space and return fire.
When police arrived, Mr Zdravkovic was dressed in only a pair of shorts, trying to extinguish the blaze with his garden hose.
Sidaros, who is now facing the prospect of a long prison sentence, did not react as the verdicts were read in court on Thursday, effectively rejecting the defence case that he could not be found guilty “in a million years”.
Sidaros, who was arrested trying to leave the country, is the only person to face justice over the attempt on Mr Zdravkovic’s life.
ACT Chief Justice Helen Murrell will sentence Sidaros in January.
