Mohammad Zreika jailed for four years over threats to shoot girl

An associate of the Alameddine family has been jailed after a holding a 16-year-old girl hostage at gunpoint before handing her a pistol and telling her to shoot herself.

An associate of the Alameddine family has been jailed for four years after threatening to shoot an underage girl he was having sex with and holding her hostage.

Just what led to Mohammad Zreika, 30, pointing a shotgun in the face of the young girl in a terrifying ordeal was a series of events that traced back to his cousin being stabbed, a court heard.

The Parramatta District Court on Friday was told Zreika had let the young girl stay at his house in July 2020 when they began a sexual relationship, but that he only found out she was 16 when he found her student card.

A bald headed and bearded Zreika sat quietly from a jail video link suite as those details were heard in a court full of his family and his lawyer Javid Faiz.

He is currently being held in the Mid-North Coast Correctional Centre at Kempsey, known to be the jail where Alameddine associates are commonly held.

Mohammad Zreika, 30, who was this week jailed for four years.

Zreika’s kidnapping of the girl was sparked after his cousin was stabbed in a brawl at South Granville in August 2020.

A few days later he called the minor and ordered her to stay where she was.

“Look I know where you are I’m sending my friend around to pick you up I have to speak to you,” he told her.

“Look I can’t speak over the phone I know you’re at the unit.”

A short time later a group of men picked her up from Granville train station and took her to Zreika’s home, where he was waiting, gun in hand.

“Look I’m gonna ask you some questions and you’re gonna answer me,” he said, surrounding the girl with two other men.

Mid North Coast Correctional Centre near Kempsey

“Why were you at Assad’s house, the guy who stabbed your friend, my cousin.”

Zreika then pointed the sawn-off shotgun at the underage girl who pleaded that she knew “it seemed suss but it was just a coincidence”.

“You’re a liar I’m going to have to shoot you,” Zreika told her.

“Shoot me,” the girl replied.

Where corrections prefer to keep Alameddine associates in the prison system.

The court heard Zreika grabbed a silver pistol from another room and then placed it into the young girl’s hand.

“You know what since you want to be shot … you can shoot yourself,” he said.

Continuing to point his gun at her, Zreika went through her phone and told her she would not be getting it back, the court heard.

Zreika then told a family friend to come and collect the girl and take her back, but that “if you come with her dad I’ll shoot you and him”.

A short time later the family friend was handed a bullet and told to relay a message to the girl’s father that “the only way you get your daughter back is if you meet me”.

When police raided his home after the girl told her family through tears about her ordeal they found her phone and guns with Zreika’s DNA on them.

He told officers during an interview the young girl had taken the gun and threatened to kill herself and because he knew it was not loaded he decided to “teach her a lesson”.

The court heard he had done several rehabilitation courses in jail and had a disrupted childhood that saw his family send him to live in Lebanon twice.

Judge Nanette Williams jailed Zreika for four years and six months after he pleaded guilty to several firearms and other offences.

He will be released on parole after serving two years and three months.

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