Who killed Mick Hawi? Comanchero bikie boss had people ‘lining up’ to take a shot

Comanchero president Mick Hawi was sprayed with bullets in a daylight execution, and many theories still swirl about who killed him.

He was the good-looking, charismatic bikie – a towering olive-skinned behemoth, dripping in diamonds and sleek-cut suiting … and more than a few people wanted Mick Hawi dead.

But on the fourth anniversary of his murder, exactly who was behind the organisation and execution of the former national president of the Comanchero is still unknown.

Of course, police have their theories.

It was just after midday on a summer’s day, February 15, 2018, when a balaclava-clad gunman, dressed in black, leant into the window of Mick Hawi’s Mercedes SUV and peppered the bikie boss with bullets.

Six rounds were fired into his face and neck, killing the national president of the notorious bikie gang, outside Rockdale Fitness First, in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

“Hawi, like all of these guys, was a regular that worked out. He had been at the gym at Rockdale that he used to go to,” Crime Editor, Mark Morri, who has spent decades covering the antics of Australia’s most feared bikies, said.

“He also was very, very security conscious because in 2007, he was inside a vehicle near a restaurant [Grappa Ristorante] in Leichardt and the vehicle was sprayed with bullets. And he was very, very lucky. He talked about one of the bullets [being] lodged in the headrest not far from where he was sitting.”

However on this particular day, the security detail he usually attended the gym with weren’t by his side, and while he was known to drive a car with bulletproof glass, the window of his black Mercedes was down.

His killers had a sitting duck.

“So he was sitting in the car and there’s this very, very graphic CCTV footage of a guy, quite gangly guy coming across, loping across the car park and shooting him,” Morri said.

“He got shot about six times in the head and somehow still kind of was still alive when emergency services got there. And then the guy is seen to run, [jump] in [a] car [and] take off.

“So then, you know, the police were searching. [They] had the choppers up and everything, found the telltale burnt-out car not far from the scene where a second car would have been used to take it off.”

A lengthy police investigation ensued and charges were laid against alleged shooter Yusuf Nazlioglu and alleged getaway driver Jamal Eljaidi. However, these fell over in the NSW Supreme Court when both men were found not guilty in 2020.

The only person doing time in relation to the murder is Ahmad Doudar who was sentenced to 4 ½ years after he pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact, for his role in moving a getaway car following Hawi’s shooting.

Police were not short of suspects with a motive for Hawi’s murder.

A Beirut-born boy of humble southwest Sydney beginnings, Hawi became the national president of the Comanchero at just 22, seizing the reins from gruff Scottish founder, Jock Ross.

However after the infamous airport brawl of 2009, which saw a violent and fatal bikie turf war spill out across the domestic terminal of Sydney airport between members of the Hells Angels and the Comanchero, Hawi earned himself a stint in prison.

Hawi was convicted of the murder of Hells Angel, Tony Zervas, who was clubbed to death with a bollard and stabbed with scissors in the fight, and sentenced to a maximum of 28 years.

However the conviction was overturned and Hawi pleaded guilty to manslaughter, seeing him sentenced to three years and six months’ jail and released on parole with time served in 2015.

During Hawi’s time in prison, the Comanchero were taken over by Mark Buddle – one of Australia’s most wanted men currently living in exile. It is thought upon Hawi’s release tensions escalated between Buddle and Hawi, with Hawi wishing to reclaim his status as leader.

“There were a number of suspects. There was one [theory] that supposedly Hawi was trying to stand over some people in the building industry to try and get some money. You know, he’d been in jail. He hasn’t been earning a lot of money,” Morri said.

“So there was a suspect there that police focused on. Then there was the argument with Mark Buddle that was quite public and it got around.”

He would have had a lot of people lining up to maybe have a shot at him.

“He was a very big character and not a shrinking violet. As I said, you know, the allegations he was standing over people that would have made enemies, the rumours that he wanted to take over the club again, that would have made enemies,” Morri said.

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