The rise of a ruthless new kingpin has embroiled Melbourne’s underworld in a gangland war in which police suspect he orchestrated a string of the “tobacco war” firebombings, a murder and a plot to desecrate the body of the sister of a long-time enemy.
The city’s underworld has been plagued by escalating violence since the release from prison earlier this year of Kazem “Kaz” Hamad, a 39-year-old career criminal who police believe has been running a major Middle Eastern organised crime gang from Dubai and other sanctuaries overseas after being deported from Australia in the middle of the year.
Kazem “Kaz” Hamad in about 2015.
For the first time in more than eight years, this masthead can publicly identify Hamad and his criminal activities after a suppression order over his identity and actions ended on Tuesday.
A series of suppression orders created by the Victorian courts since 2015 to “protect his safety” have been used by the Iraqi national as a cloak of invisibility to conceal his crimes and rise to power.
Hamad was deported to his native Iraq after serving an eight-year sentence for his involvement in a heroin trafficking ring.
Toby Mitchell (left) and Kazem Hamad at a boxing event in about 2015.
The expulsion did not stop the infamously violent criminal from attempting to take control of significant turf in Melbourne’s drug and illicit tobacco markets and waging a campaign of revenge against his personal and business enemies.
Hamad has been identified – but not named – by Victoria Police sources as a key player behind the “tobacco wars” that have broken out across Victoria and interstate, which have involved more than 30 firebombing attacks between Hamad’s new gang and a long-established Melbourne crime family.
He is also the prime suspect in connection with orchestrating the attempted theft and desecration of the body of gangland boss George Marrogi’s sister in July, and the shooting death of Mohammed Akbar Keshtiar, aka “Afghan Ali”, in August. However, no charges have been laid, and the crimes are still being investigated.
The information used to document Hamad’s history and criminal activities has come from more than seven police sources and more than half-a-dozen underworld and legal sources, in addition to court documents and other records obtained by this masthead since 2015.
“He is, we believe, leading a significant criminal enterprise which is impacting not just Victoria but other states,” said Detective Inspector Graham Banks of Victoria Police’s Lunar taskforce at a press conference last week about the attempted body theft. At the time, Victoria Police was restricted from publicly identifying Hamad because of the suppression order.
The taskforce was launched in early October to tackle the explosion in violent crime – firebombings, shootings and bashings – that has erupted this year between rival Middle Eastern organised crime syndicates.
“I’m concerned about the recklessness of this group in particular. It’s a thing that’s emerging across Australia where we have high-level organised criminals living overseas, directing harm into the community. Reckless abandon is how they go about it because they’re often in countries without extradition,” Banks said.
“He is directing, we would say, the majority of the crime that’s been the subject of why this taskforce has been stood up. He’s directing it from the top of the pyramid.”
Hamad, whose current whereabouts are unknown, could not be reached for comment.
A cloak of anonymity
Hamad is the gangland power Melbourne has never heard of, a figure like Keyser Soze from the film The Usual Suspects. The 39-year-old is notorious and feared across the underworld, but has remained virtually invisible to the public.
He arrived in Australia with his family in 1998, when he was 14, as a refugee from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
After dropping out of school at 15, Hamad’s straight life ended just two years later with his first arrest for what would be a rapidly escalating series of violent crimes and drug offending.
According to psychological reports tendered to courts in his criminal matters, 2009 was a watershed year that turned the then 25-year-old towards a life of serious crime. His family returned to Iraq following Saddam’s downfall after the US-led invasion, and his much-loved brother was killed in 2009 in a bombing attack.
Within a year, Hamad would be implicated in four separate bashings or kidnappings for money. In three cases, witnesses were too scared to proceed.
But this was just the tip of the iceberg for Hamad, who had become a rising power in the city’s western suburbs after building a crew of ruthless and violent young associates involved in drug trafficking, standover rackets and robberies. He had also branched out to form close connections to a major bikie club and had become a close mate of prominent underworld figures such as former outlaw motorcycle gang member Toby Mitchell.
“He came up really fast. Nobody knew who he was and then all of sudden his name was all over the place,” an underworld source said. “You kept hearing ‘Kaz did this’, ‘Kaz was responsible for that’. He started to be talked about a lot and seen a lot.”
Along the way, Hamad amassed a lengthy list of convictions including for armed robbery, burglary, false imprisonment, assault and assault with a weapon.
Kazem Hamad, Toby Mitchell and another man in about 2015.
On a long-ago deleted Facebook account, he boasted of his success by posing in pictures next to a Lamborghini Gallardo with the licence plate “URCASH”.
Hamad first erupted into public consciousness in April 2015, after a hit that killed his brother-in-law Khaled “Kay Kay” aka “Karl Kay” Abouhasna in the driveway of his western suburbs family home.
The duo were pulling into the driveway about 2am when a gunman opened fire and fatally wounded Abouhasna.
Police intelligence and underworld sources have long believed crime boss George Marrogi was behind the attack, but the suspected assassin had missed the man who police believe was his real target: Hamad. The crime has never been solved and Marrogi, who is in prison for drug trafficking and murder, has never been charged.
Meshilin Marrogi with her brother George Marrogi; her crypt and memorial in Preston General Cemetery; and stills from CCTV footage of the break-in at the cemetery on July 30.
At the time of the fatal shooting in April 2015, Hamad was facing charges for his involvement in a major drug trafficking network, and the magistrate in his case was convinced that the near miss meant Hamad’s life was in danger, even if it had nothing to do with the current prosecution.
The court ordered a blanket ban on his name and any information about his whereabouts “in order not to endanger [his] safety”.
In one form or another, these suppression orders would be extended for another 8½ years – effectively removing the media’s ability to report on Hamad in any way.
Everything was off limits, from his trial and conviction to his alleged involvement in orchestrating a string of violent crimes during his rise to power in Melbourne’s underworld from inside prison and after he was deported from Australia this year.
Among the most notorious incidents was an execution in a crowded Officeworks car park in Campbellfield in September 2016, where rival Marrogi gunned down Hamad’s associate Kadir Ors in what underworld sources say was an ambush attack intended to foil a kidnapping and murder plot hatched against Marrogi by Ors and Hamad.
Hamad spent eight years in jail either on remand or serving his sentence for drug trafficking, a period that – under the noses of prison authorities – saw him evolve from being a mid-tier criminal player when he went into custody in 2015 to a full-blown gangland boss by his release this year.
This was all achieved while locked in a maximum-security cell and while his visits and phone calls were supposedly under constant monitoring by Corrections Victoria officials.
Hamad’s ability to manipulate the system and dominate those around him even in the confines of custody is probably no better illustrated than by the brief stint he spent in immigration detention on Christmas Island in 2015.
Fire damage at a tobacco shop, one of more than 30 arson attacks staged during “tobacco wars” between Kazem Hamad and a notorious Melbourne crime family.Credit: Nine News
He had been granted bail in March 2015 following his arrest for drug trafficking, and Victoria Police and the AFP were desperate to have it revoked following his brother-in-law’s murder – fearing retribution attacks. Intelligence also suggested Hamad was continuing to commit serious drug crimes and acts of violence.
In September 2015, then immigration minister Peter Dutton cancelled Hamad’s permanent residency visa on character grounds after lobbying from the AFP.
Hamad was quietly picked up, bundled onto a private jet and sent to the immigration detention facility on Christmas Island ahead of plans to deport him to Iraq.
It solved the immediate problem for authorities by getting him off the street. But it created a host of new issues as Hamad had been dropped into a volatile facility where authorities could exert little real control over hundreds of detainees with criminal convictions awaiting deportation.
Under centre rules, inmates were allowed to have phones and Hamad would use a rotating set of numbers to continue to plot and run his criminal enterprises nearly 5000 kilometres away from Melbourne.
The AFP’s bid to rid the system of Hamad would ultimately fail when a magistrate ordered his return to Melbourne to face the drug trafficking charges.
He was transported back to prison in Melbourne, where he would remain for the next eight years as he awaited a long, drawn-out process to stand trial.
He was eventually sentenced to eight years, a jail term that finished in mid-2023 after accounting for the time he had spent on remand since 2015.
Hamad used his time in prison to network and build alliances with some of Melbourne and Australia’s best-connected and most powerful gangland players, from bikie club members to international drug traffickers.
But the suppression orders had an unintended effect that put Hamad’s safety at risk inside prison, where his considerable and growing list of enemies was not content to let bygones be bygones.
After he was convicted of drug trafficking, court records show Hamad made a secret deal to receive a discounted sentence in exchange for handing over a cache of military-grade weaponry that included an assault rifle and a hand grenade.
Known as a “hand-in”, this has become a common tactic for underworld players facing major jail time, agreeing to turn over a stash of high-powered weapons to authorities in return for a sentencing discount. Hand-ins are usually negotiated in secret as the deals straddle a fine line in the underworld, where any co-operation with police is considered a breach of the code of silence.
In Hamad’s case, the judge who signed off on the deal decided it warranted a blanket five-year suppression order over his identity, conviction and sentence.
This vacuum of information was ruthlessly exploited by his enemies, who obtained supposedly confidential copies of court documents showing his “co-operation” with the hand-in but dummied them up to make it look like Hamad had turned into a full-blown informer.
This fake documentation, obtained by this masthead, was circulated widely in the underworld and was even slipped into prison to be passed around, according to underworld sources.
Far from it marking the start of his downfall, Hamad toughed out the rumours.
Destination Dubai
Even though Hamad finished his eight-year jail sentence in the middle of the year, he would never breathe free air in Australia.
He was taken from custody and sent back to Iraq, a country he hadn’t seen since he was 14. His permanent residency visa had been cancelled in 2015 and law enforcement authorities were determined he would never set foot in Australia again.
Hamad had begun laying the groundwork for his return to Melbourne’s underworld for years – which was partly a plan to get rich and partly a plan to settle old scores.
In March 2023, police allege, Hamad’s new syndicate kicked off a major turf war in the illicit tobacco trade, which had been controlled for more than a decade by a major Melbourne crime family.
There have been more than 30 firebombings of tobacco shops and restaurants as the rival syndicates have battled for control of the illicit tobacco industry and a lucrative “tax” forced on shop owners.
Hamad may have been deported to Iraq, but he remained there only briefly.
After deportation from Australia, Hamad moved to Dubai.Credit: iStock
Using the network of contacts he had built up in prison, he moved almost immediately to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where he began living in a luxury apartment that became the centre of his expatriate criminal operation, according to underworld and police sources.
A long line of significant Australian criminals have found safety and security in the Gulf city.
Despite a nearly two-decade criminal history and deportation from Australia, Hamad was allowed entry into the UAE.
While these criminal expatriates may be at war with each other at home, Dubai is considered neutral ground for all comers.
“These guys could pass each other in the street or see each other in a nightclub and nothing happens. No one wants to upset the balance, no one wants to risk getting kicked out,” an underworld source said.
From there, police allege, Hamad has been embroiled in a tit-for-tat firebombing war with his rivals in the tobacco trade and plotting gruesome revenge against Marrogi by attempting to steal and desecrate his sister’s body.
Hamad is also suspected of ordering the shooting death of Mohammed Akbar Keshtiar, aka “Afghan Ali”, on a South Yarra street in early August.
But Hamad’s actions in Australia would prove too much even for UAE authorities.
In September, he was suddenly deported back to Iraq.
The government of the United Arab Emirates declined to comment when contacted by this masthead. The AFP also declined to comment on whether it made any representations to UAE authorities about Hamad’s presence there and suspected activities in Australia.
But, last week, Victoria Police claimed responsibility for the move.
“This particular person had resided for a short period of time in a country that he felt comfortable, and in relative luxury, in Dubai. He no longer lives there. And that is no small part to the joint approach of Victoria Police and those agencies [Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission],” Banks said.
Hamad is now believed to have moved again, but authorities are not saying where.
“We’re not at the point where we can charge senior syndicate members,” Banks said. “I think people understand these days that technology is such that crimes can be thought about in one country and transmitted to another.
“It’s very complicated to get to the ultimate objective of being able to charge those who are directing it. That is certainly the ultimate objective, but we’re a long way from that at this stage.”
Meanwhile, the war continues.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.