Tactics used by bikie cops in probe of wannabe hitman Axel Sidaros branded ‘unacceptable’
The ACT’s highest court has found police working a high-stakes investigation into a failed bikie assassination attempt didn’t act properly after using an undercover cop.
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A crack team of anti-bikie and undercover cops acted unacceptably when they got a would-be bikie hitman to confess to his role in the failed assassination of a rival, the ACT’s top court has ruled.
Comanchero Axel Sidaros was in December found guilty of a string of charges including the attempted murder of the gang’s former Canberra chapter president, Peter Zdravkovic.
Sidaros and three other unknown men — presumed to be Comanchero members or associates — shot up and firebombed Zdravkovic’s house, only for him to emerge nude from the shower and return fire.
The guilty verdict came despite Sidaros’s damning confession to an undercover police officer not being presented to the jury.
In a pre-trial decision made public on Friday — months after the trial — the ACT Court of Appeal found putting an undercover police officer in Sidaros’s cell at the Canberra city watch house was “unacceptable having regard to community standards”.
Sidaros was arrested on his way out of the country, and declined an interview with investigators.
Sidaros was put in a cell with “William” an undercover cop who had a cover story that he had was part of a Sydney-based crime gang.
When Sidaros told “William” he had been charged with attempted murder, the undercover cop said, “Oh, f*ck. You’re not mucking around are you”.
The duo’s cell had been bugged, and Sidaros was recorded describing how there had been a rift in the Canberra chapter of the Comanchero bikie gang, that he had sided against Mr Zdravkovic.
“And a couple of the boys … one night we went to the pres’s house,” Sidaros said.
The undercover cop told Sidaros he had shown “the sort of loyalty you can’t find every day of the f*cking week”.
Sidaros was also recorded boasting that Canberra police were “sh*t c*nts”, and that the other three men involved in the attempted murder of Mr Zdravkovic would never be caught because they didn’t use their own guns in the attack.
In their decision to keep the evidence from the jury, Justices John Burns, Michael Elkaim and Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson said police had deliberately set out to “defeat (Sidaros’s) rights” to not speak with police and to not incriminate himself.
The judges also said because Sidaros was in the cells, he couldn’t walk away from the undercover cop, and that he was not cautioned that anything he said could be used against him in court.
The judges said the “context in which the deception occurred and the combination of these factors” meant it would have been wrong for a jury to hear Sidaros’s confession.
Sidaros will be sentenced at a later date.