Gangster has survived four murder plots: How Samimjan Azari became Sydney’s most marked man

For almost a decade, Samimjan Azari has quietly climbed the ranks of the Alameddine crime clan.

Once a gun and drug runner for the network, Azari spent years as a loyal cog in the machine of the sprawling criminal organisation, entrenching himself in Alameddine operations while flying largely under the radar of police as he gradually cemented his standing as a senior member.

Around him, senior figures and associates have been jailed or fled overseas, paving the way for his ascent from a relative unknown in Sydney’s underworld to the city’s most marked man, who this week survived the fourth attempt on his life this year.

Samimjan Azari pictured after an attempted assassination in Granville.Credit: Nine News

Three-and-a-half years in prison for selling firearms and cocaine to undercover counter-terror police did little to stunt his rise, which continued after he was paroled in 2020.

Azari was arrested alongside Bilal Alameddine after a two-month sting, during which they sold Desert Eagle and Smith & Wesson handguns and more than $100,000 worth of cocaine to officers.

Deliberately targeted by police because of his family history and known connection to the Alameddine family, Azari was handed a seven-year sentence with a non-parole period of 3½ years.

Three years earlier, Azari’s older brother, Omarjan, was jailed for his role in an Islamic State plot to behead Australians and broadcast their killings online.

In 2015, Bilal Alameddine tried to leave Australia to join Islamic State terrorists in the Middle East as a 16-year-old. Months later, a relative sharing his notorious surname, Talal Alameddine, supplied the gun used by a radicalised teenager in the murder of police accountant Curtis Cheng outside NSW Police headquarters.

Even with his jailing and connections to high-profile associates, Azari has remained a relative unknown in the gangland wars that have plagued Sydney in recent years as conflicts between rival organised crime networks claimed high-profile victims.

But over the past six months, that anonymity has dissolved as he found himself at the centre of an imploding war within the broader Alameddine network that has spilt onto Sydney’s streets and triggered plots to assassinate him.

On Monday, Azari survived the third attempt on his life in three weeks when two masked gunmen stormed a Turkish restaurant in Auburn, shooting him in the arm and shoulder, and hitting an innocent restaurant employee – a 47-year-old mother – twice in the torso.

A 25-year-old associate of Azari’s, acting as his bodyguard, was shot in the face – the third companion travelling with him to have been killed or seriously injured in attempts on his life in the past month. Another man with the pair fled into a back room of the restaurant as Azari fought off one of his attackers with a chair.

Weeks before, on May 25, another of Azari’s associates, Dawood Zakaria, was fatally shot in the head by assailants who opened fire on a Toyota HiLux in which they were travelling.

Who has carried out the failed assassinations on Azari remains a major focus for detectives, with no gunmen so far arrested, but investigators believe the orders have come from within Azari’s own network after an internal conflict “imploded”.

“Obviously, they’re a violent organisation, and they’re happy to target people that are outside their organisation or those, if necessary, from within their own organisation,” acting Police Commissioner Peter Thurtell said in the hours after Monday’s shooting.

Little over a year ago, NSW Police triumphantly declared it had “eradicated” the Alameddine network, arresting what senior figures were left in Australia after several of the group’s bosses, including kingpin Rafat Alameddine, fled the country for the safety of Lebanon in November 2022.

Samimjan Azari’s older brother, Omarjan, was jailed for his role in an Islamic State plot to behead Australians.Credit: Nine News

Since then, Rafat, has been living abroad as a free man, wanted alongside fellow gangland figure John Ray Bayssari over an alleged criminal conspiracy to murder their underworld enemy Ibrahem Hamze during the peak of a war between the Alameddine and Hamzy clans for control of Sydney’s lucrative drug trade in August 2021. That war, between the Alameddine and Hamzy clans, has been linked to 20 organised crime killings since 2020, police allege.

In December 2023, Alameddine’s second-in-command at the time and Zakaria’s brother, Masood Zakaria, was charged over the conspiracy to kill Hamze after he was deported from Turkey, where he was living after leaving Australia aboard a fishing boat two years earlier.

Despite what police hailed as a major victory, the Alameddine network has retained its presence as one of Sydney’s most influential organised crime groups. And what success authorities did have in dismantling the network’s Australian operations, has been, in part, undone by the fallout since.

Ibrahem Hamze (centre) was allegedly the target of John Ray Bayssari (left) and Rafat Alameddine (right).Credit: SMH / NSW Police

Police sources, who sought anonymity to speak freely about investigations linked to the Alameddine conflict, said the network has suffered from a lack of leadership in recent years, resulting in an escalating feud between rival factions that has led to the recent spike in violence, including the attempts on Azari’s life.

That lack of authority within the network, sources said, has left trigger-happy lower-ranking members free to call the shots with little regard for the consequences in a conflict that can’t be linked to one particular incident but rather a series of minor issues within the broader network.

The lack of senior leadership has also brought with it a departure from the meticulously planned and executed operations that have become synonymous with gangland killings of recent years. In its place, botched assassinations carried out by what police believe are inexperienced and incompetent hired killers chasing a lucrative contract.

A suspected team of hitmen, the so-called “Afghani crew”, is believed to have been recruited into the internal conflict as contract killers.

Among the warring factions, the KVT, a street gang made up of predominantly Fijian members and long enlisted as muscle for the Alameddines, has fallen out with the network.

But the KVT is itself divided. A number of alleged members remain linked to Azari and other senior members of the Alameddine network who have led the organisation’s attempted infiltration of Sydney’s booming illicit tobacco trade.

In January, several men linked to the Alameddine network and the KVT gang allegedly broke into a Condell Park storage unit and detained three men in an attempted robbery of millions of dollars worth of illicit tobacco. The men were allegedly tied up, and one had a toe severed.

Far from a struggle between senior figures for control of what remains of the Alameddine empire, parts of the conflict, believed to centre on a series of minor grievances, stoop as low as the network’s street-level operations.

Once feared and protected by loyal followers, those at the top of the Alameddine organisation have been placed in the firing line by the conflict.

The man police allege has climbed the ranks to head the network in Australia, Ali Elmoubayed, has himself received death threats and has been forced to flee the crime clan’s long-time home suburb because of concerns for his safety.

A week ago, Elmoubayed, a former bodyguard to Rafat Alameddine, inadvertently escaped a drive-by shooting at his Merrylands home by minutes.

Elmoubayed was en route to Parramatta Local Court to ask a magistrate to let him relocate his young family when the bullets were fired. Four days earlier, a car outside the Earl Street home was firebombed.

Alleged Alameddine crime network boss Ali Elmoubayed arrives at Parramatta Court after his house was targeted in a drive-by shooting.Credit: Janie Barrett

It is not clear whether the alleged shooters, who were arrested less than an hour after the incident, knew the house was empty and fired the shots as a warning, or if the attack was a genuine attempt on the gangland figure’s life.

Hours later, Elmoubayed’s bail conditions were varied, allowing him to move to an inner-city high-rise apartment building with security features his lawyers argued would protect him and his family from future attacks.

His relocation was the latest indication of an emerging pattern in the conflict within the Alameddine network, with several of the crime clan’s members and associates taking measures to alter their movements and make themselves less predictable for would-be assassins.

A week earlier, Alameddine associate Ali Younes, widely known by his rap moniker, Ay Huncho, successfully argued for a change to his bail conditions so he could report to police over the phone rather than in person, fearing he would be targeted.

Like Younes, the routines of several gangland figures have put them in the firing line of would-be assassins flying in the face of law enforcement as their stalking becomes more brazen. Police believe in two of the four attempts on Azar’s life, gunmen followed him from a public place. On Monday, Azari was followed from a police station, which he left an hour before he was cornered inside the Auburn restaurant.

Ali Younes, widely known by his rap moniker, Ay Huncho, had his bail conditions altered.Credit: ABC Four Corners

Despite the best efforts of police to keep Azari safe, death threats still loom over him.

After the Granville shooting, police warned there could be further attempts on Azari’s life and raised concerns of retaliation as the conflict escalated.

There would be further bloodshed on Sydney’s streets because of Azari’s standing in the Alameddine network, they said. Within weeks, police were proven right.

In the days before Monday’s shooting, and after another foiled attempt on his life in Rozelle on Friday, detectives repeatedly warned Azari of the risks posed to him should he remain on Sydney’s streets.

An associate of Azari’s is treated by paramedics after the Auburn restaurant shooting.Credit: Sydney Morning Herald

“He was made aware of threats against his life,” Detective Superintendent Jason Box said on Tuesday.

“He acknowledged those threats against his life, to an extent, he was reasonably dismissive of what we had to say, and he’s obviously continued his movements in the public area with not a great deal of concern.”

This week, detectives have issued further warnings.

“I’m hoping that this individual reassesses his movements,” Box said.

“I’m hoping that he’s not accessible. I’m hoping that he does take the advice that we’ve given and that it does not present an opportunity like we’ve seen yesterday.”

But with little indication the warnings will be heeded, and gunmen inching closer to their goal, the warnings, like Azari’s luck, may be wearing thin.

“We’ve given him all the information that we can … to assist him and protect himself,” Box said.

“What he chooses to do with that information is a matter for him.”

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