By Perry Duffin
Alleged drug boss Ahmed Haouchar will be bailed to a rehabilitation facility frequented by criminals and celebrities after a court heard he allegedly imported 100 kilograms of cocaine using the alias “De Niro” along with a man using the codename “Wally Lewis” on a Qantas flight.
Haouchar is accused of being the “primary Australian facilitator” of a drug shipment that landed at Sydney Airport on October 7 on a flight from South Africa, the Australian Federal Police alleged last month.
Ahmed Haouchar (in glasses) has been bailed to rehabilitation facility Connect Global (bottom right) )which housed celebrities and drug dealers after an AFP operation uncovered a $40 million drug plot at Sydney Airport.
AFP officers swarmed the tarmac, arresting baggage handlers Darren Bragg and Michael McPherson as well as van driver Ziad el-Mustapha, and later a fifth man, David Cain, at a Coogee home.
Haouchar, from Padstow, is accused by the AFP of holding a commanding role in a major international drug syndicate and made contact with a cell in Johannesburg that stocked the plane with drugs worth $40 million. His role, the AFP believe, was to distribute the drugs throughout Australia.
The 42-year-old on Wednesday, faced the Supreme Court at Parramatta where he asked to be released on bail to Connect Global, a drug addiction treatment centre north of Newcastle.
Connect Global made headlines when former television star Andrew O’Keefe enrolled in the waterside retreat after his numerous run-ins with the law.
Court records show other Connect Global residents have included bikies, large-scale drug dealers and violent offenders – all of whom claim their lives were turned around by the facility.
Cocaine dealer Jordan Blakeney, while awaiting trial in 2020, was bailed to the same rehabilitation facility for a year. He said it “completely turned his life around”, the courts heard. He was given a three-year prison sentence in May 2022.
Cocaine dealer Simon Esho was sentenced to just shy of two years in prison earlier this year. Half of that sentence was served at Connect Global after a short stint in prison, the rest in the community under the treatment of the centre.
Ahmed’s brother, Bilal Haouchar, was reportedly been arrested in Lebanon over an unrelated alleged syndicate.Credit: Facebook
Alleged Comanchero Matthew Douet, arrested as part of the AFP’s AN0M sting, has spent more than a year at Connect Global and reportedly took on a role as supervisor. He is fighting dozens of drug charges at trial next year.
Justice Hamet Dhanji released Haouchar on bail, but not before noting the case against him hung on an unanswered phone call.
Central to the allegations is that Haouchar was using encrypted apps to communicate using aliases.
“There is… strong evidence [Haouchar] was using the name De Niro,” Dhanji said.
De Niro used encrypted chats to organise a meeting with another person using the name of rugby league legend “Wally Lewis”, three days before the drugs landed in Sydney.
Police watched Haouchar as he attended a meeting that matched those plans set by De Niro, Dhanji said, quoting from the police evidence.
“After the drugs had been imported, communications took place between [Haouchar] and the person using the name Wally Lewis in relation to the collection.”
The AFP had snatched a phone from one of the men arrested on the tarmac and quickly called De Niro, the court heard.
Across town, officers watched as a phone went off near Haouchar at the same time, the court heard. The AFP arrested Haouchar in Rushcutters Bay.
“AFP called De Niro and heard a phone in the possession of the applicant ringing,” Dhanji said.
“That is sufficient to establish the case against [Haouchar] is one of real strength.”
Five airport logistics workers in South Africa were also arrested after the AFP passed intelligence about their alleged roles in stacking the plane with drugs.
Haouchar was released on a total $1.7 million bail, secured by his mother and a family friend in the construction industry.
He will have to wear an electronic ankle monitor, a tracking device which Dhanji said has been known to fail and allow others on bail to flee NSW.
The court heard evidence from Haouchar’s sister that he is one of seven siblings. Among them is younger brother Bilal, a feared gangster believed to have been arrested in Lebanon last month as part of a different alleged criminal syndicate.
A third brother, Nadal, was also arrested at Sydney Airport as part of that alleged crime network believed to be a “billion-dollar syndicate” and the largest operating in NSW.
Ahmed Haouchar will return to court in February.
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