The Snitch: Mick Hawi murder trial a great example of a farcical outcome in a murder trial

The fallout from the murder trial of slain Comanchero bikie boss Mick Hawi has taken another strange turn after a truck driver pleaded guilty to concealing what he knew about the broad daylight assassination.

We’re going to let you in on a little secret. Are you sitting down?

OK, here we go: The outcomes in court cases are occasionally farcical and don’t make sense. We saw this recently when the failed murder case relating to the execution of former Comanchero bikie boss Mick Hawi returned to court.

The latest instalment of the saga saw truck driver Moustafa Salami plead guilty to concealing that he knew who pulled the trigger on Hawi all along, but never told police.

Two lessons came out of this: first, court cases often boil down to clever negotiating from lawyers rather than findings of fact; second, when in doubt, blame the dead guy.

First, a quick recap. Hawi was gunned down by a masked assassin as he sat in his car outside a Rockdale gym in 2018. Ahmad Doudar, Yusuf Nazlioglu and Jamal Eljaidi were charged with murdering Hawi. Salami was charged with being an accessory after he was accused of disposing of a vehicle used in the execution. However, this charge was pulled by prosecutors because of a lack of evidence.

Yusuf Nazlioglu (left) was found not guilty of the murder of Mick Hawi (right). Nazlioglu has since been murdered himself.

It was at this point that things got complicated. Doudar pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of accessory after the fact to murder after his lawyers pointed out that the evidence was not strong enough to prove that Doudar murdered Hawi, only that he concealed one of the cars used in the shooting.

When a person in Doudar’s position pleads guilty like this, they sign a document that sets out the facts of what they are prepared to admit to. In some cases, they don’t even read it before signing.

The twist in Doudar’s facts was they named Nazlioglu as the person who shot Hawi. And guess what else? Nazlioglu and Eljaidi pleaded not guilty to murder and were set to stand trial in front of a jury.

Doudar’s case was separated from the others because he was to be sentenced rather than stand trial.

So Doudar gets called to give evidence in the trial of Nazlioglu and Eljaidi, right? Of course not.

Mick Hawi was murdered outside a gym in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

The rules say people like Doudar can’t be called to give evidence until they have been sentenced. And Doudar’s sentencing hearing was not until after their trial. Also, Doudar didn’t sign a witness statement or agree to give evidence. He got sentenced to a minimum of three years and four months.

Making things even weirder, a jury found Nazlioglu and Eljaidi not guilty of Hawi’s murder. But Nazlioglu may have been better off in jail. He was shot dead outside his Rhodes apartment in June in a homicide that remains unsolved.

The latest chapter was written in the Downing Centre District Court last week. Salami pleaded guilty to a charge of concealing information from police. That information being he knew who shot Hawi the whole time. And that person was (drumroll) Nazlioglu.

The result being a dead end in the Hawi murder case.

NO FLOWER POWER

Cocaine smuggler and one time high-profile racing identity Damion Flower has had a bad trot of late – and it just got worse, courtesy of the NSW Crime Commission, which convinced a NSW Supreme Court judge to freeze assets they allege Flower was secretly in control of.

And in a demonstration of just how much power the commission wields, Flower wasn’t even allowed to know about the court hearing.

Damion Flower. Picture: AAP Image/Brendan Esposito

Flower was jailed for 28 years in February for smuggling 228kg of cocaine into Australia.

The commission went to the Supreme Court this month to claim Flower had used money from his criminal exploits to buy property hidden in the name of a company called Samaco Enterprises.

Lawyers for the agency asked Justice Peter Hamill to hear their freezing application in secret to prevent Flower and others from “disposing of the property”.

Justice Hamill agreed and granted the freezing order in closed court without Flower’s knowledge.

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