Slain bikie Omar Zahed‘s ’chaotic’ life revealed as court unmasks him as drug, gun crook

Omar Zahed was gunned down as assassins opened fire on his Comanchero boss brother, Tarek, earlier this year. Tarek narrowly survived and now Omar has been identified, in previously hidden court papers, as a committed crook.

When Omar Zahed was gunned down many believed he was collateral damage for assassins hunting a million dollar bounty on his brother Tarek - the high ranking bikie clinging to life next to him in a pool of blood.

But now court documents have unmasked Omar Zahed’s underworld career; as a meth cook who fled the state, a drug dealer who handed a brick of cocaine to a cop in a family restaurant, and a repeat gun offender “desensitised to violence” throughout his life.

Comanchero brothers Omar and Tarek were shredded with bullets as they stood in the foyer of the Body Fit Gym on Parramatta Rd at Auburn in May this year.

Tarek narrowly survived, despite his grievous wounds, and spent months recovering in hospital.

Omar died on the floor of the gym.

Omar, left, died at the Bodyfit gym in Parramatta while Tarek, right, survived badly wounded after assassins opened fire in May.

Now court documents reveal that Omar had become eligible for parole in his latest stay in prison just 18 months earlier, in September 2020.

For two years the case was kept from the public, Omar was known by a pseudonym, but this week a non publication order over his identity was lifted after an application by The Daily Telegraph.

The court file paints a very different picture of the lesser-known Zahed.

Omar was arrested in early 2012 after police raided a property in Catherine Field, in Sydney’s west, and found an ice laboratory.

Intercepted phone calls captured Omar speaking about the manufacturing process among the crew who were frustrated at how long the clandestine cook up was taking.

His fingerprints were on a kilogram of the drug ice in tupperware - the courts concluded he acted as an adviser or consultant in the meth lab and he was on bail for firearms offences at the time.

Mourners and police at the funeral of Omar Zahed. Picture: The Australian

Omar was bailed after stumping up a massive amount of money in late 2012 but, just over a year later, he was at the centre of another drug bust, the court documents say.

Omar walked into a family restaurant in Wiley Park, in January 2014, with a kilogram of cocaine in a backpack and sat down in a private area with a buyer - unaware it was an undercover cop.

He told the officer to take the brick of cocaine out of the backpack and replace it with the cash, $235,000, before leaving the restaurant.

Police searched Omar’s house, two months later, finding firearm parts and ammo but Omar fled to WA to continue his crimes, the court documents say.

The most serious find was a large capacity magazine for an assault rifle - a charge that carried up to 14 years prison.

Months later Omar was extradited back to NSW and faced justice.

Omar Zahed, killed in May, has had his criminal past unearthed after The Daily Telegraph applied for a court order to be lifted.

The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, in 2019, heard the then 36-year-old Omar grew up with a violent father and siblings in constant conflict with the law.

His psychologist told the court his “violent and chaotic upbringing” impacted him.

“The psychologist opined that the applicant ‘appears to have become desensitised to violence both through his exposure in the home as a child and later through his associates’,” the judges wrote.

The experts feared the drug addicted Omar would become “totally institutionalised” as he went in and out of the criminal justice system as a young man.

Omar won a reduced sentence on appeal and went away for a maximum of ten years, with six non parole for the drug lab and cocaine deal.

Police forensic teams scouring the gym where Omar was shot dead. Police are still hunting his killers. Picture John Grainger

Tarek’s role as a boss in the Comancheros overshadowed Omar in recent years, but they were known to be fiercely tight to the point police warned both men that they were in danger - even though Tarek was a marked man.

“Their lives have been at risk because one is a senior member of the Comanchero motorcycle group which is Australia’s largest criminal organisation,” NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Michael Fitzgerald said after the shooting.

Tarek was arrested late last month and charged with murdering Youssef Assoum in December of 2014, he is in custody on remand.

Police are still hunting for the gunmen who shot the Zahed brothers.