Lawyer Mahmoud Abbas moves to Lebanon after being seriously injured in shooting

Police sources said criminal lawyer Mahmoud Abbas was “already packing a bag” after being shot outside of his Greenacre home in July.

High-profile lawyer Mahmoud Abbas is understood to have moved to Lebanon, with police sources saying he was “already packing a bag” after he was shot in July.

The criminal solicitor is believed to have made for the Middle East with his family in the wake of being left with serious injuries when a gunman opened fire on him outside his Greenacre home.

“He knew he still had a target on his back,” a senior police source said.

“Once he was (medically) cleared he was ready to get on a plane and get out of here. He made it no secret he was moving countries.”

Legal sources this week said his firm was still operating in Bankstown while he “spent some time away” in Lebanon.

“And not for a holiday,” one told the Saturday Telegraph.

The Saturday Telegraph first revealed in July that about 18 months before the shooting Abbas had been kidnapped and had his head shaved “as a warning” by underworld figures.

The solicitor never reported the incident to police despite being bashed and also having his eyebrow shaved during the ordeal.

A picture of a shaved Abbas was also circulating among gangland circles at the time.

Mr Abbas, 31, was left needing emergency surgery on his knee and had his kidney removed after the gunman fired multiple shots at him as he got into his BMW on Narelle Cres on July 26.

The NSW Police’s State Crime Command is still investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting, with Mr Abbas taking police to the Supreme Court to stop them accessing his electronic devices in August.

He had argued they contained legally privileged material and has still not provided police with a statement regarding the Greenacre shooting.

Mr Abbas is not accused of having any links to criminal activity or wrongdoing, but police believe his criminal clients may know why he was shot.

Up until a few months ago police believed the abduction and his shooting were linked and that “similar parties” were involved in both incidents targeting Mr Abbas.

The experienced solicitor was shot in the same week the city’s underworld war claimed its 22nd and 23rd victims, prompting renewed police attention on gangland violence.

Mr Abbas is one of only a handful of people to have been targeted in a gangland shooting and lived to tell the tale since the violence first erupted in mid-2020.

The newly formed Task Force Magnus just this week arrested 20 people and seized $2 million worth of cars used by a raft of the city’s organised crime networks.

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