Inside the new generation of Melbourne underworld feuds

Big personalities and competition for even bigger money are a complex and volatile mix, which has sparked conflict on the streets of Melbourne.

Melbourne is once again plagued by a series of underworld feuds.

Feuds have been a part of underworld life - and death - in Melbourne for generations.

Big personalities and competition for even bigger money are a complex and volatile mix which has sparked conflict since before Squizzy Taylor and Snowy Cutmore were going at it a century ago.

Much later, Mark “Chopper” Read and Alphonse Gangitano, both no longer with us, shared a mutual loathing of the highest order.

Gavin “Capable” Preston and Chris “Badness” Binse grew up nearby in Melbourne’s western suburbs but they had other things in common; the same birthday and a deep-seated hatred of one another.

Carl Williams detested the Moran family because one of them once shot him, so he spent years systematically wiping them out. Their enmity ended with Jason, Mark and Lewis in a cemetery.

Notorious 1920s gangster, Squizzy Taylor, and his gang turned Melbourne’s streets into a battleground. Picture: Supplied

A few years ago, the Herald Sun looked at the great gangland feuds but, even since then, others which were simmering then have surfaced publicly.

It could be argued that those of today, while less deadly, have had much more regular and widespread consequences than the fractures of yesteryear.

More than 100 fires lit at tobacco shops and businesses associated with rival factions have altered Melbourne’s criminal landscape in the past 18 months, with no clear sign that it is about to stop.

There have been multiple failed hits at houses and on the roads, as well as drive-by attacks on properties in the dead of night.

Bashings and abductions which have gone under the public radar have also been carried out, usually without complaint by victims.

They were once on good terms but that changed and the fierce Kazem Hamad-George Marrogi feud has been around for almost a decade.

Hamad - who was deported to Iraq last year - is suspected of being behind a late-night break-in at Preston Cemetery last year in which intruders violated the crypt of Marrogi’s late sister Meshilin.

George Marrogi's sister Meshilin Marrogi. Picture: Supplied

It was a disturbing break with gangland tradition and - if Hamad was responsible - a gory indicator of the depth of feeling between him and George, the founder of the Notorious Crime Family gang.

Some of that animosity may stretch back as far as 2015 when Hamad’s brother-in-law Khaled Abouhasna was murdered at Altona Meadows.

No charges have ever been laid but there were subsequent indications that Hamad - rightly or wrongly - believed Marrogi had some kind of role in the killing.

What is known is that a year later Marrogi shot dead Hamad family associate Kadir Ors at the Campbellfield Plaza shopping centre in Melbourne’s north.

“Kaz” was not there but a relative gave furious chase to Marrogi as he raced through the streets of the northern suburbs in the minutes after the fatal shots.

The Hamads’ ally Ahmed Al Hamza, now living in Dubai, is also believed to be no fan of the Marrogis.

This is despite the fact that, as a teenager, he was a firm friend of George’s younger brother Jesse.

The pair were investigated by armed crime police over high-level firearms offending in that period but fell out some time after Al Hamza was wounded in an unsolved shooting at Campbellfield in 2016.

It is believed Al Hamza is also on bad terms with the El Nasher family from Melbourne’s north.

Ahmed Al-Hamza smiling at the wheel of a luxury Lamborghini sports car in Dubai. Picture: Supplied

Al Hamza was reportedly allied to kickboxer Omar Bchinnati but absent at the time the latter was targeted by brothers Abdullah and Ali El Nasher in a deadly 2019 fight-night incident at The Pavilion in Kensington.

They traded barbs before an outbreak of gunfire which left Bchinnati wounded, Ben Togaia dead and Abdullah in a jail cell for a maximum of 29 years over the young father’s murder.

Ali was later found to have stabbed a close associate of Al Hamza during a fracas in the northern suburbs.

The El Nashers have had their own share of bad luck.

Ali was brutally bashed at St Kilda in 2020 and another family member was the intended target in a gunpoint home invasion which only ended when the intruders realised they had the wrong house.

Bchinnati has in the past been heavily at odds with former Mongol bikie Sam ‘The Punisher’ Abdulrahim.

Back in 2015, the pair punched on in some of the wildest scenes ever seen inside the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.

Abdulrahim has had some dangerous friction with others, including Al Hamza and the Hamad family.

The Hamads suspected him of having a role in the Ors murder, something Abdulrahim had vehemently denied.

Shooting victim Kadir Ors.

Ors, Abdulrahim and another man were sitting at a bus stop when Marrogi pulled up in a Holden Commodore and immediately zeroed in on Ors.

Abdulrahim has remained sworn enemies with Hamad and Al Hamza ever since.

Hamad has been on a mission to try to wreck business interests of the former Mongol bikie-turned-boxer, who has worked to entrench the once-notorious Sydney gang Brothers for Life in Melbourne.

Abdulrahim’s ambition as a fighter has also been a target.

In February, Thornbury’s Furlan Club was torched on the eve of a boxing match featuring “The Punisher”, around the same time it was revealed police had warned him his safety was in danger.

Despite the firebombing, Abdulrahim pressed on and won the deferred fight in Thailand weeks later.

The Notorious Crime Family’s George Marrogi.

Underworld figures believe Hamad was behind the firebombing of the QRoom in Thomastown in June, on the eve of a boxing bout featuring Abdulrahim’s nephew, Khoder.

The Power Gymnasium, where The Punisher has been known to train, has been repeatedly targeted by arsonists, along with a Moonee Ponds smoke shop linked to the crime boss.

In May, Abdulrahim survived being shot at 17 times after assailants lured him out of his Thomastown home by setting his parent’s cars on fire a few suburbs to the south.

He escaped injury despite chasing the gunmen down before ramming them with his car.

Days later, gunmen again opened fire on Abdulrahim’s empty townhouse but, by then, such incidents must have felt like the new normal

In 2022, Abdulrahim somehow survived being repeatedly shot while trapped in a car as he left his cousin’s funeral in Fawkner.

Those in gangland circles are of the firm opinion that all of that mayhem has been carried out by soldiers from the Hamad-Al Hamza faction.

Abdulrahim is not the only formidable figure going head-to-head with Hamad.

Some members of the Haddara clan have publicly been at odds with Hamad since he decided to zero in on their lucrative stronghold over the black market smoke trade over a year ago.

Those members of the Haddara clan held dominance over the market for at least a decade until Hamad surfaced, launching a campaign of firebombings and extortion against the market-leader’s smoke shops and associated business interests across Melbourne.

A string of restaurants and cafes headed up by the family of an alleged crime boss have gone up in smoke in that time, including Middle Eastern restaurant Karizma in Docklands.

Reports of a tobacco war ceasefire earlier this year appear to have not borne fruit and there are no indications of an end to the wave of attacks on smoke shops across the western and northern suburbs linked to the conflict.

Originally published as Inside the new generation of Melbourne underworld feuds