The War 2 Kill or be Killed: Inside world of ‘ruthless’ Sydney crime boss Bilal Haouchar

The latest episode of The War: Kill or Be Killed reveals why Bilal Haouchar remains one of the most feared men on Sydney’s streets despite living half a world away in Lebanon. WATCH episode three now.

• Watch The War: Kill or be killed ep 3

Bilal Haouchar is one of the most ruthless men to ever walk Sydney streets and a man never to be crossed, according to a former head of the NSW Police Homicide Squad.

The 37-year-old has for many years been a key target for NSW Police and the Australian Federal Police, and is now also a central figure of The War II: Kill or be Killed.

Haouchar left Sydney in 2018 before NSW Police could apply for a supervision order on him and has for the past five and a bit years been living in Lebanon, all while allegedly managing to hold on to the power he wields in Australia.

Mick Willing was boss of the Homicide Squad when Haouchar was at his most dangerous in Sydney and reveals in The Daily Telegraph’s mini docu-series there was a four-month period in which police suspect the alleged crime boss was involved in a series of shootings which left five people dead, and two seriously injured.

“Around 12 years ago was the first time I heard the name Bilal Haouchar as a person of interest in a number of murders,” Mr Willing said.

Bilal Haouchar’s Lebanese arrest photo. Picture: supplied

Bilal Haouchar.

“There were a number of murders towards the end of 2012 that investigators found were linked and formed Strike Force Earp in early 2013 to investigate all of those, which we believed at the time the same group of criminals were involved in all of them - and Bilal Haouchar was right at the centre of that group,” Mr Willing claimed.

“(He was) ruthless and the information we got from the streets … was depending on the circumstances, he wasn’t a person you crossed.”

Former deputy commissioner Mick Willing. Picture: Richard Dobson

Bilal Haouchar (right) dining with Mohamad Arnaout in Lebanon before his arrest.

The first of those shootings was the double murder of Roy Yahgi, 32, and Jamie Grover, 26, as they sat in a car in Wentworthville on August 30, 2012.

Mr Willing said Yaghi was a well-regarded drug cook for the Hells Angels, who was killed on the orders of the Comanchero to hurt the business of their bikie rivals.

“Back then he certainly had an association with the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang, (and) he could be described as a stand over man and gun for hire,” Mr Willing said.

“Roy Yaghi was a drug cook for the Hells Angels and James Grover was just collateral damage.”

Faalau Pisu was shot to death while at a friend’s wedding in 2012.

A police mug shot of Bilal Haouchar from 2013.

The next incident police investigated under Strike Force Earp was the fatal shooting of Faalau Pisu, 23, at the Canley Vale wedding of a Comanchero bikie mate, followed two days later by the attempted murder of John Devine — another Comanchero — at Rhodes, all over a possible internal fight in the club.

Bilal Haouchar (far right) pictured at a friend’s home in Lebanon.

But it was the shooting death of a young father Ali Eid, 38, and wounding of his friend, Mohammed Hanouf, 34, as they worked on Eid’s family home in Punchbowl that really rammed home the dangerous nature of Haouchar and his associates to the veteran detective of 31 years.

“There was a getaway driver and two shooters, and one of those shooters used a Mac 10 fully automatic pistol,” Mr Willing said.

“That was pretty brazen and at the time I remember being quite shocked.”

Haouchar was initially charged with murder over Eid’s death but the case collapsed and in 2018 he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of accessory after the fact to murder.

He was released from prison in June that year on a good behaviour bond, which prompted police to urgently seek an interim detention order to have him put him back in jail which failed.

That was then followed by the application for an ankle bracelet to be fitted as part of the interim supervision order, only for Haouchar to first leave Australia and never return.

Originally published as The War 2 Kill or be Killed: Inside world of ‘ruthless’ Sydney crime boss Bilal Haouchar