Maghnie v Middle Eastern organised crime figures

When you live in the crosshairs of dangerous people, it pays to be tough enough to drive yourself to hospital with a bullet in your neck. But Nabil Maghnie’s luck couldn’t last forever.

• In a new series we look at the biggest rivalries of Melbourne’s underworld

Nabil Maghnie had plenty of enemies in Melbourne’s volatile world of Middle-Eastern organised crime.

His erratic temperament and itchy trigger finger put him in the crosshairs of some very dangerous people, including a number of notorious crime families from the northern suburbs.

But his real heavyweight stoush was with another well-connected MEOC figure, Jim, whose real name cannot be used for legal reasons, and another foe with whom he swapped lead more than once.

The pair had, at times, enjoyed a cordial relationship but it was never going to be permanent.

Maghnie and Jim were heavily enmeshed in the drug scene and linked to major outlaw motorcycle gang identities.

They once punched on brutally at Crown Casino after chancing upon one another.

Nabil Maghnie, deceased uncle of Anthony Youhan. Instagram. (Verified Shapiro)

Maghnie outside Melbourne West police station after being questioned by detectives. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Underworld sources say Maghnie accepted a $100,000 contract to murder Jim, in revenge for the death of another MEOC figure.

It is said that Jim got wind of Maghnie’s assignment and did something about it with near-fatal consequences.

Maghnie was sitting in his car in what has remained an unknown location.

A gunman, suspected of being Jim, suddenly emerged and started shooting through the windscreen.

Though wounded, Maghnie was able to grab his own weapon and return fire, an action which may have saved his life.

Badly wounded to the head and upper body, Maghnie was somehow able to drive himself to hospital with a bullet in the neck.

“Say what you like about Nabil, but he walked the walk,” one source told the Herald Sun.

Police on the scene of the Maghnie shooing in Dalton rd Epping. Picture: Wayne Taylor

The fellow who reputedly offered the kill contract to Maghnie was not as fortunate.

He was murdered some time later.

Maghnie’s conflict with Joe was just as outlandish.

One police source told the Herald Sun Joe had been shot four times, twice by Maghnie.

One of those attacks on Joe, who has been linked to large-scale drug trafficking, was in his driveway.

There are suspicions Joe was involved in the wounding of Maghnie in a shooting incident years before Jim got him in his sights.

These experiences might have been enough for other men to take a back seat, but not Maghnie, who knew only one way to make money and almost seemed addicted to action.

Devastated family at the scene where Maghnie was gunned down. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Maghnie’s funeral at Northern Memorial Park in Fawkner today. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Within months, he was back to his old ways and continued to be the focus of high-level police interest until January 9 this year.

On that night, he was shot dead by a gunman who to this day remains, publicly at least, unknown.

There are still no charges over his death at the hands of the gunman in an incident at the Epping house in January this year.

Maghnie had arrived with his son Abbas and another man to collect money over a car accident involving his daughter.

He died on the roadway outside after, as one policeman understatedly put it, “negotiations have broken down.”

The homicide squad’s investigation remains active but Jim definitely wasn’t involved.

He had the rock-solid alibi of being inside a maximum-security prison.

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