How Middle Eastern crime gangs waged war on Melbourne’s streets in 2023
From brazen daylight murders to fiery tobacco warfare and a cemetery atrocity, 2023 was a volatile year in Middle Eastern organised crime activity in Melbourne.
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Brazen public murders, fiery tobacco warfare, drive-by shootings and a cemetery atrocity punctuated a volatile year in Middle-eastern organised crime.
Instability was evident to the very end of 2023 with festive season arson and gun attacks at the family home of formidable gangland veteran, Mohammed Oueida.
It was a year which marked the re-emergence of exiled underworld figure Kazem Hamad, the man police believe has up-ended the MEOC landscape by orchestrating much of the chaos from overseas.
Huge money fuelled fighting on some fronts while grudges which go back years continued to generate other friction.
Those differences ignited next-level bloodshed – some in broad daylight – which was, even by MEOC standards, extraordinarily confronting.
The acts of violence were horrific enough but the risk posed to uninvolved bystanders was enormous.
On January 20, gunmen opened fire on underworld figure Douglas Mikhaeel while he was stopped in his car at the boom gates at Deer Park train station.
That would have been bad enough but his 26-year-old partner and her two children, who were also inside the car, could easily have been wounded, or worse.
The 27-year-old, who had previously been linked to jailed underworld strongman George Marrogi’s Notorious Crime Family gang, survived being hit at least three times after the assailants opened the driver’s side door.
Police at the time were working to pin down the motive for the attack, with Mikhaeel known to have an array of enemies in the criminal world.
Among them were members of a family emerging as a major underworld force in Melbourne.
Just weeks after the Mikhaeel ambush, a man was shot in the Whittlesea Gardens in Thomastown.
The violence unfolded in the late-afternoon on February 4 and was later described by police as a targeted attack, after which the victim found his own way to hospital and was uncooperative when questioned.
Six months later, veteran underworld figure Mohammed Keshtiar was gunned down at South Yarra.
The triggerman struck just off the busy Chapel St strip as Keshtiar walked home from a gym.
Keshtiar, 53, had been living in an apartment complex which he had chosen partly because of the kind of security it afforded a man known to have his share of enemies.
In 2017, a bungled attempt on his life at Narre Warren only succeeded in killing Zabi Ezedyar, who had called in to visit.
An associate with Keshtiar at the South Yarra declined to help investigators, as is frequently the case in heavy MEOC crimes.
Next to go was Gavin Preston, shot dead on September 9 at the Sweet Lulu cafe in Keilor.
Preston was sitting with Abbas Maghnie Junior, known as AJ, the son of his old running mate and fellow crime figure, Nabil Maghnie, when the hit team struck.
Preston died in a hail of bullets as the pair relaxed in an outdoor area, surrounded by members of the public who were lucky to escape becoming casualties of the gunfire.
In a sign of the times, chilling CCTV of the moment the 50-year-old died was doing the rounds on social media by dinner time that day.
It was what some had always expected would happen to Preston, who had earlier in the year got out of prison for the fatal shooting of drug dealer Adam Khoury, a crime which reinforced his already fearsome reputation for violence.
He had been involved in some heavy standover work in the months after being released, costing money to big players and giving others grey hairs because of his unpredictable nature.
In October, the homicide squad made a big breakthrough when Jaeden Tito, 22, was charged with Preston’s murder after police stormed a home at Bradbury in suburban Sydney and extradited him to Melbourne.
Investigators looking into Preston’s death have also questioned 23-year-old Sydney man Rabii Zahabe in Long Bay prison.
Just shy of a month after Preston’s murder, Robert Issa died in an equally brazen daylight shooting, this time in front of shocked shoppers at Craigieburn Central.
Issa was a relative unknown until four masked gunmen shot him and friend, 28-year-old Eric Catanese, who was seriously wounded but survived.
The pair had been sitting in a white Mercedes near the shopping centre’s Timezone arcade as the killing unfolded in a matter of seconds.
One motive doing the rounds in gangland circles was that Issa died over a major underworld dispute, which was running parallel to Melbourne’s tobacco wars.
In the period before he was killed, someone had sprayed bullets at the Craigieburn home of Issa’s parents in a late-night drive-by shooting.
As with the other murders, the getaway car was later found incinerated in an attempt to destroy forensic evidence.
The public nature of the deadly ambushes was similarly outrageous to a June, 2022, attempt on Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim’s life.
Abdulrahim was known to have dangerous foes but no one expected the murder plan would be played out as he sat in his Mercedes-Benz at a cousin’s funeral.
The crime which shocked the underworld as much as any this year unfolded in the dead of a July night at Preston General Cemetery.
Intruders broke into a mausoleum where they desecrated the crypt of Meshilin Marrogi, the sister of jailed drug kingpin George.
It is unclear whether they planned to remove her corpse in a sick strike against her brother or if the motive was to steal valuables from her coffin.
There was underworld scuttlebutt early that Preston was responsible but police believe it was ordered by Hamad, who was deported to Iraq mid-year after a long prison stretch for heroin trafficking.
The ability of heavy-hitters like Hamad to run Melbourne crime empires from afar has emerged as a major challenge for police.
Hamad has been enmeshed in fierce competition for the city’s illicit tobacco trade which, until not that long ago, was dominated by one syndicate.
Police say the number of shops selling illegal tobacco and vapes has risen from 50 to 1000 in recent years as major organised crime figures reap colossal profits from a racket where penalties for those busted are relatively light.
It was inevitable newcomers could see the kind of huge profits available and deal themselves in, leading to tension over market share which resulted in the torching of about 30 tobacconists.
One, in Moonee Ponds, which had been linked to Abdulrahim, was hit three times through the middle of the year.
Police say an October fire at a gym connected to Abdulrahim was suspicious and suspected of being connected to tobacco industry rancour.
A Williamstown North panel shop connected to formidable MEOC figure Fadi Haddara was set alight in October.
Another Haddara business, the Karizma restaurant in Docklands, was destroyed by fire last month, an attack which threatened the safety of dozens of people living in apartments upstairs.
Haddara was arrested earlier this month and charged with affray and firearms charges by detectives from the Lunar task force, which was established by Victoria Police to curb the tobacco warfare.
Separate friction between other factions is believed to have been behind a series of unrelated fire attacks on businesses.
The Sonsa market on Smith St, Collingwood, went up in flames on June 29.
It was one of more than a dozen arsons across Melbourne during the middle of the year which police say were linked.
One of Sonsa’s directors is Ali Gunes, whose brother Hasan is facing charges over a 2021 Greenvale shooting.
That incident was allegedly connected to an altercation inside the notorious Love Machine nightclub with Douglas Mikhaeel.
In July of this year, Hasan Gunes was arrested at North Balwyn and charged over a roadside confrontation with former Comanchero bikie Harwe Sherwani.
It has been alleged Mr Gunes rammed Mr Sherwani’s car on the Western Freeway at Ravenhall on July 7 then chased him brandishing a hammer.
The home of Sherwani, who is believed to have been an ally of Robert Issa, had been firebombed during this period.
On Christmas Eve, the Fawkner home of Oueida’s family was targeted.
Shots were fired into their front door in a terrifying late night incident then, days later, a car was torched at the Major Rd property.
Oueida – who has previously been shot twice – is locked up on remand in a West Australian prison where he awaits trial on high-level drug charges.
Amid all the drama, the law had some significant wins, among them the Preston murder inquiry’s rapid progress.
In February, more than 20 people were arrested after an operation by the joint Victoria Police-Australian Federal Police operation Steelers, which looked into the financial side of George Marrogi’s leviathan business empire.
Among those charged were George’s Mother Madlin Enwiya and his younger brother Jesse.
Jesse remains a significant figure of interest in MEOC circles, not least because of his relationship with Sabrine Maghnie, the daughter of George’s old rival Nabil Maghnie.
In June, the scope of Steelers’ work became apparent.
It was revealed authorities had stripped $47 million in assets from NCF, wealth accumulated from international drug trafficking directed by Marrogi from inside Barwon Prison where he was locked up for the 2016 murder of Kadir Ors.
Steelers found that the NCF syndicate had controlled 60 residential properties, including 33 parcels of land in the Brookfield Estate development site in Melbourne’s west.
There was an $800,000 superyacht, paintings by great Australian artists, business, luxury cars and $2.2m in cash.
One of the gang’s own photos, seized by police, showed a $10 million pile of cash. Sgt Nathan Toey of Steelers said Meshilin Marrogi’s savvy was crucial in her brother’s empire.
“Meshlin had everything running extremely well,” Sgt Toey said at the time.
“She was buying artwork, she was buying cars and jewellery and moving money through different accounts and businesses.
“They had a proper business set-up and, effectively, watching Queen of the South is what they had set up.”
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