Raptor Squad arrests six men in alleged attempted drug heist at Port Botany

Officers in a PolAir helicopter were watching on as men in balaclavas allegedly searched shipping containers for a cocaine importation in an botched attempt at a drug rip, a court has heard.

Raptor Squad officers have charged six men for an alleged attempted drug rip at Port Botany overnight. Picture: Jenny Evans/Getty Images

NSW Police and the Australian Border Force are scouring hundreds of shipping containers for an importation of cocaine that six men were allegedly attempting to rip from a Port Botany holding yard.

The men in balaclavas were allegedly armed with bolt cutters when police attached to Raptor Squad allegedly caught them red handed as they jumped a fence into the Visa Global Logistics shipping company in Banksmeadow on Sunday night.

Officers – including some observing from the air with PolAir – allegedly watched as the men approached multiple shipping containers inside the yard, with their efforts to breach them unsuccessful.

Police allegedly found images on phones taken from the six men with the number of a container where packages of drugs were supposed to be inside, and intercepted messages indicating the six were allegedly to keep an amount of the drugs as payment for the retrieval.

In documents tendered to the court, police allege further messages in a group chat titled “gangactivity” on a dropped Google Pixel also outlined details of a container holding “15 bags” along with a replacement lock to conceal any interference with the unit.

The group were arrested near Port Botany later that night. Picture: Nikki Short

A search by police and ABF officers found no drugs inside the nominated containers.

“Where the consignment is or has gone is a mystery,’’ said one source.

“Whether they have been removed by someone else earlier, if they had been loaded onto another container are all possibilities.”

Hussein Abed, Viliame Ratucadre, Kenneth Safavizad, Vilisoni Pasikala, Nicholas Fonua, and Venasio Tomasi were all charged with attempting to possess a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug, attempting to break, enter and commit a serious indictable offence, and participating in a criminal group.

Abed, 18, was the only group member to apply for bail, with the other five having their matters adjourned to the Downing Centre Local Court in March for brief service.

On Monday during a bail application for Abed, barrister Ben Barrack told the court the matters were “far from a strong prosecution case”, describing the alleged offending as “staggeringly clumsy”.

A general view of shipping containers at Port Botany. (Photo by Jenny Evans/Getty Images)

“Six people stumbling around a shipping yard, if there was any sophistication in this it was the two people who were a distance away, controlling people, using young people,” Mr Barrack said.

Police will allege Abed, Safavizad, Pasikala and Fonua searched for the shipping container while Ratucadre and Tomasi “orchestrated” the operation from a parked car in nearby Matraville.

“The submission is, those people presumably have organised whatever it is to be retrieved and made sure a couple of young people went in to do the dirty work for them,” Mr Barrack continued.

Magistrate Stephen Barlow denied Abed’s bail, with the teen having an emotional outburst in the dock.

Mr Barlow said while Abed was “towards the lower end of the hierarchy of people involved” as “youthful muscle engaged to carry bags from the shipping container”, there was still a “joint criminal responsibility”.

The group will return to court on March 12.

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