Ahmad Haddara in Geelong court, charged with extortion, assault

A magistrate will decide whether a man accused of threatening a rival tobacco shop owner with violence and arson will face trial, after the alleged victim was grilled in cross-examination.

Ahmad Haddara is accused of threatening to burn down the store of a rival tobacco shop owner in Hamilton in western Victoria.

A man has fronted Geelong court accused of extorting a regional Victorian tobacco shop owner and threatening to bash him until he had “blood up to (his) knees”.

Ahmad Haddara, 34, appeared in the Geelong Magistrates’ Court on Thursday for a committal hearing, charged with extortion, unlawful assault, failing to comply with a police order and dealing with $71,350 cash alleged to be the proceeds of crime.

The matter was previously heard in the Warrnambool Magistrates’ Court in December.

Mr Haddara, who the court heard ran a tobacco shop in Hamilton, is accused of threatening a rival tobacco shipowner on June 8 last year, shortly after the alleged victim store opened in the western Victorian town.

The court heard the victim had initially thought Haddara was a customer, before Haddara, who had attended the shop with another man, spoke to him in Arabic and told him to close the store.

Haddara allegedly told the man he would be beaten until there was “blood up to your knees” and his store would be burnt down, the court heard.

According to charge sheets released by the court, Haddara was charged by detectives from Victoria Police’s elite anti-bikie Echo Task Force on July 25 last year.

On Thursday, the court heard testimony from the alleged victim and the police informant in the matter, detective acting-sergeant Joshua Curwood, attached to the Hobsons Bay Criminal Investigation Unit (CIU).

During a testy cross-examination, barrister Theo Alexander, for Mr Haddara, grilled the alleged victim on when threats were made and why he had supplied only snippets of CCTV to police.

The court heard the evidence brief included short videos from the morning of the alleged extortion, rather than a longer and continuous piece of footage.

“Mr Haddara is not videoed entering or leaving the shop, would you agree with that?” Mr Alexander asked at one stage.

“So who was the one who was threatening, was it his ghost?” the complainant replied, through an Arabic translator.

Both Mr Alexander and the complainant appeared to grow frustrated as the examination continued.

Mr Alexander attacked the alleged victim’s credibility in his final submissions, arguing the court had heard “lie upon lie upon lie”.

Mr Alexander submitted a jury would “have the greatest difficulty” accepting the complainant’s evidence.

A prosecutor for the Office of Public Prosecutions said inconsistencies about where the footage came from and how it was stored could reasonably be “put down to confusion”.

The defence’s assertions were not fatal to the alleged victim’s credibility, the prosecutor said, nor did they even dent his credibility.

The court heard there was a “thread of consistency” between the complainant’s evidence, the recording to a triple-0 call and the snippets of CCTV footage.

The evidence was “well above the threshold (and) well meets the committal test”, the prosecutor said.

Ms McGarvie will hand down her decision on whether or not to commit the matter to the County Court on April 11.

Mr Haddara’s bail was extended.

Originally published as Ahmad Haddara in Geelong court, charged with extortion, assault