Inside the tense Melbourne meeting where Comancheros were told ‘you will walk out of here alive’

Seventeen days before underworld figure Mitat Rasimi was murdered, there was a tense meeting where four Comancheros were severely outnumbered and told they’d be allowed to “walk out alive”.

The Red Rooster where they were picked up from.

A tense meeting where outnumbered Comancheros were told they would be allowed to “walk out of here alive” preceded Mitat Rasimi’s murder, a star trial witness testified.

That gathering was held to discuss a $200,000 debt that the bikies and an associate, gangland figure Nabil Maghnie, were allegedly trying to collect, amid an environment of escalating friction.

The court heard evidence that a group of four men collected a gun from a Dandenong townhouse and went to a meeting at a local business.

But when the four, including Maghnie and two Comancheros, arrived at the business on February 14, 2019, they were in for a surprise.

Mitat Rasimi was found dead with gunshot wounds.

The group were greeted by the sight of up to 20 people outside and 50 or more men inside, the Supreme Court heard.

Among them was Mitat Rasimi, who would be shot dead 17 days later in an ambush as he sat in his car on Dawn Ave, Dandenong.

The court heard that the meeting was a tense stand-off, with one key participant repeating the line: `We are gentlemen; you will walk out of here alive.”

When it was over, the visitors left via the “quickest roller-door” and drove to the Red Rooster outlet on Stud Rd, Dandenong, where Maghnie had earlier collected them.

The four then held a meeting among themselves.

The court was told Maghnie felt ambushed and he later spoke of what had happened on the phone to jailed mate Gavin Preston.

Nabil Maghnie was allegedly trying to collect a $200,000 debt during the tense meeting.

“I didn’t know what I was walking into. I thought … there’s going to be 10 blokes there or something, brother. We walk in, the four of us. No shit. I know for a fact I saw 80 blokes. Eighty fucken blokes. And there was another 20 blokes outside,” he told Preston in the taped call.

There was no “target” over the debt before the Red Rooster meeting, the trial heard.

There had been a meeting nine days earlier at Dandenong restaurant, The Pavilion, after Maghnie had made a phone call “out of the blue” about the debt.

Maghnie was reportedly agitated at that meeting.

Pavilion owner Joel Maroun told the court four people he felt were from a bikie gang were in a group which was meeting with two other men at side-by-side tables outside.

Mr Maroun said he believed he recognised one of them as Nabil Maghnie some time later when he saw him on television.

They all sat calmly for about 15 minutes, he said.

Mr Maroun testified that the “bearded guy” he believed was Maghnie then stood and pushed one of the two men his group was meeting.

“It wasn’t too much of a push but it was enough to put some separation between them,” Mr Maroun said.