Police net closing in on Comanchero bikies Hasan Topal, Hakan Ayik and Mark Buddle

Police are using encrypted messages from their Operation Ironside sting to close in on senior bikie gang members like exiled model Hasan Topal.

Police are closing in on senior members of the Comanchero bikie gang, including exiled wanted man Hasan Topal.

The Herald Sun understands that Australian Federal Police and state police officers are sifting through AN0M data in relation to a key trio of the bikie gang.

AN0M was a trojan horse operated by the FBI and monitored by the AFP.

Millions of messages exchanged on the app were monitored by police in real time.

Topal, Hakan Ayik – a former lieutenant to murdered Comanchero boss Mick Hawi - and ex-Comanchero leader Mark Buddle are the targets of the major police operation.

Topal and Ayik are believed to be in Turkey while Buddle fled Dubai for Iraq shortly before the worldwide AN0M raids in June.

Hasan Topal.

Topal’s Melbourne interests have taken some major hits since 2019.

One group of western suburbs-based criminals closely linked to him were arrested and charged by the Echo taskforce in the period after he left Australia.

Those men had been involved in high-level drug trafficking and violent crime.

Another Comanchero associate also linked to shooting crimes is facing cocaine and methylamphetamine charges after the worldwide AN0M busts earlier this year.

Topal is believed to have been communicating with several others in Australia before the AN0M trap was sprung and they were charged.

Earlier this year the Saturday Herald Sun revealed a murder contract was put on the life of Topal in the period before he left Australia.

Mark Buddle.

Hakan Ayik.

Sources said that powerful Middle-eastern organised crime figures wanted to have the former male model eliminated.

The reason is unknown but it was clear Topal had upset some dangerous people before his departure for Turkey in 2019.

He left the country not long after being released from prison over a brutal strip club brawl with New South Wales gang members in Canberra.

Topal is under police investigation over the 2017 mistaken-identity murders of Muhammed Yucel at Keysborough and Zabi Ezedyar at Narre Warren.

The intended targets were connected to the Mongols OMCG.

The same weapon used to kill Mr Ezedyar was also used in the wounding of two Bandido bikies on the Bolte Bridge, the shooting of a senior Comanchero and a drive-by attack on a Richmond car hire business.

The Bandidos had identified the Comanchero as having been behind two drive-by shootings targeting its gang in 2017.

Topal was suspected by the Bandidos of being the triggerman in which three Bandidos were shot outside the Brunswick clubhouse in Weston St in April, 2017, before a second drive-by on the Bolte Bridge three months later in July.