The War Kill or Be Killed: How alleged Sydney kidnappers bungled $1b drugs plot

The Daily Telegraph’s latest episode of The War: Kill or Be Killed has revealed the bizarre events that led to the arrest of four alleged kidnappers and uncovered 722 kilograms of drugs in a Sydney unit. WATCH episode two now.

These are allegedly the faces of four bungling kidnappers whose plot to steal $1 billion worth of drugs from a Ryde apartment came unstuck when they locked themselves in a garage, providing police with the easiest of arrests.

Bilal Gheneim, 20, Eldin Huric, 20, Moumin Hammouda, 23, and Liam Goodhew, 24, looked defeated as NSW Police officers arrived to find them in the basement of the Ryde apartment block on December 18 last year.

Minutes earlier, a resident of the unit complex had called triple-0 after allegedly spotting the four men wearing balaclavas and trying to force their way into the garage.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal incredible allegations from court documents about the bizarre events that led to police arresting Gheneim, Huric, Hammouda and Goodhew — and later discovering 722 kilograms of drugs.

Police allege that for a week leading up to the attempted kidnapping, an associate of the four men had been monitoring the intended target, Hussein Habeeb.

Police documents allege Hussein Habeeb was the intended kidnapping target.

Habeeb, 24, had allegedly moved to Sydney from Melbourne a month earlier and rented one of the units in the complex on Airbnb — with plans to use it as a drug safe house.

Unknowingly, in the week leading up to the failed kidnapping Habeeb had allegedly been selling drugs to the associate of the four men, who was using their encounters as an opportunity to “gather intelligence” on him.

Police allege the “intelligence” they gathered led the group to believe Habeeb was in possession of between “150 to 500 bricks”, or one-kilogram blocks, of cocaine.

Bilal Gheneim.

Moumin Hamouda.

Despite being aware that there was allegedly a large amount of drugs to steal off Habeeb, when the group finally arrived at his Ryde apartment block they did so in a small Toyota Yaris hatchback.

It was 6.13am on December 18 2023, when a resident of the unit block allegedly noticed the Toyota Yaris “attempting to gain access inside the garage via means of force”.

CCTV images from the garage allegedly show Gheneim with his face covered walking towards the garage door, to help one of his co-accused open the door up, so that the car could drive inside.

Eldin Huric.

Liam Goodhew.

But police allege that while they managed to get the automatic garage door to rise, in doing so they broke it — meaning that when it went back down it became stuck.

“Police entered the garage to find all four persons situated inside the Toyota Yaris, parked in the visitor car park bay,” court documents state.

After placing all four men under arrest, police allegedly searched the car and discovered a “kidnapping kit” consisting of a 60cm crow bar, a 20cm meat cleaver, a 12cm knife, a box cutter and handcuffs, as well as imitation police lights.

Gheneim recently applied for bail in the NSW Local Court where he was represented by solicitor Abdul Saddik, who argued that his client could not have known about plans to kidnap Habeeb or steal the drugs, because of the car he arrived in.

“For starters … anything that weighs 722kg is not going to fit in a Toyota Yaris with four people,” Mr Saddik said.

Lawyer Abdul Saddik represented Gheneim in court.

Police seized about 722kg of cocaine after the alleged kidnapping was bungled. Picture: NSW Police

Gheneim was granted strict condition bail that includes daily reporting conditions.

Goodhew is also out on bail, while Huric and Hamouda remain behind bars on remand, with none of the four yet to enter a plea.

Habeeb also remains on remand behind bars having allegedly attempted to flee over the balcony of the Ryde unit when police arrived, before being arrested and charged with supplying a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug and knowingly deal with the proceeds of a crime.