Sydney crime figure Mahmoud ‘Brownie’ Ahmad shot dead in Greenacre
This is the moment Strike Force Raptor officers try in vain to revive notorious underworld figure Mahmoud ‘Brownie’ Ahmad after he was fatally shot in a cold-blooded assassination. Police had repeatedly warned the 39-year-old he had a million-dollar price on his head.
Police & Courts
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Sydney’s underworld has exploded again with one of its biggest figures, Mahmoud “Brownie” Ahmad, shot dead in the city’s southwest late last night.
Ahmad was gunned down in a hail of bullets outside a home on Narelle Crescent in Greenacre about 9.30pm on Wednesday.
Despite the efforts of police and paramedics, the “Mr Big” of the city’s crime world died a short time later.
The gunman fled the scene before a burnt out car was found a short time later in Greenacre. It is not yet known if the two incidents are linked.
The investigation into Ahmad’s death is being led by the Homicide Squad, with its boss Danny Doherty confirming police had warned him of the danger to his life - but he refused to listen.
“There is a long list of people that would like to see or do harm to rally and someone last night managed to do so,” Detective Superintendent Doherty said.
“Even up until last week police were executing firearm prohibition orders on associates, warning them that by being associated with him they’re in danger.
“He’d (also) been warned in the past that he was a marked man but… he didn’t heed those warnings.
“(This is) the consequences of him continuing on in the Bankstown area of going about his normal business as if he hadn’t care in the world, but he was in imminent danger and it was warning that had been given to him.
“Police were out there everyday and every night, knocking on doors - trying to disrupt this sort of criminal activity and suppress it, and I think they have been reasonably successful in relation to that, but we can’t do this on our own.”
“Brownie” as he was best known was the brother of Walid “Wally” Ahmad who was himself gunned down at Bankstown Centro Shopping Centre in 2016 - sparking a war which claimed at least four lives.
Detectives believe Ahmad had been visiting associate Ali Banat, with the gunmen likely lying in wait in the street as he was inside his friend’s house.
When he walked out of the two-storey home they opened fire, with Det Supt Doherty saying it was a “miracle” no one else was killed.
“This was a incredibly brazen and callous murder, where multiple shots were fired,” he said.
“At the time… in the street was a number of people, and it’s an absolute miracle that no one else got killed or injured.”
Police have been cracking down on organised crime gangs over recent years following the bloody feud between the Alameddine and Hamzy clans.
They have also been targeting other figures, with Ahmad and his associates chief among them.
Since late-2021 they have done 3,600 jobs linked to organised crime, carried out 360 search warrants or prohibition order searches, laid 800 charges and seized $4.5 million in cash and drugs.
“Raptor (Squad) officers were actually out in the area and were the first responders to this shooting murder, and actually found Ahmad lying dead in the street and performed CPR on him,” Det Supt Doherty said.
“So it just shows or demonstrates how proactive the police have been in the southwest metro region.”
Narelle Cres neighbour Anthony Tesoriero said he heard between six and eight shots, before a car sped out of the cul-de-sac.
As he walked his young daughter to school he admitted the incident was “traumatic”, but said as an innocent person it hadn’t scared him.
“I heard six, seven or eight very hard shots. At first I though they might have been fireworks, but you soon realise they’re not fireworks,” he said.
“It happened very quick, they were in and out.
“I mean it’s got nothing to do with us, we’re innocent, but yeah, it was a little bit traumatic.
“It’s not like bullets were flying, I think they hit the target they were going towards - and we’ve got a good police force behind us so we’ll be all right.”
Video shows a Porsche - believed to have been a getaway vehicle - alight on a nearby street minutes after the shooting.
“Brownie was well aware that there was a contract out on his life,” one underworld source said.
“He came back from Lebanon recently and wasn’t afraid to face the fact that he knew there were people out to get him.”
Ahmad pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Safwan Charbaji in 2016 after coming back to Australia, having left the country in the aftermath.
He was only released from jail six months ago and had immediately become a target, with police warning him late last year of an imminent plot to kill him on a day he was due to visit Rushcutters Bay Park in the city’s eastern suburbs.
He had been told by officers not to attend because of the dangers posed to innocent families and children, and so did not.
Police and underworld sources told how in the aftermath he had surrounded himself with a crew of allies in a bid for protection, which on Wednesday night ultimately failed.
While the long-running feud between the Alameddine and Hamzy clans - that has claimed at least seven lives in the past 18 months - has attracted enormous police attention and with recent arrests is believed to have been quelled, Ahmad’s death presents a new battlefront for them to contend with.
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Originally published as Sydney crime figure Mahmoud ‘Brownie’ Ahmad shot dead in Greenacre
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