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A ruthless underworld kingpin causing widespread havoc on the streets of Melbourne, despite being deported overseas, has been unmasked for the first time.
Detectives suspect Kazem ‘Kaz’ Hamad, 39, of leading a powerful Middle Eastern organized crime network that continues to run amok in the city while pulling strings from foreign sanctuaries such as Dubai.
Police believe Hamad is behind a recent wave of criminal activity, including the bombing of multiple tobacco shops, a murder and a plot to desecrate the grave of the sister of a gangster’s rival, since he was released from prison in early this year.
Hamad is understood to have gone from being a minor player in Melbourne’s underworld when he was sent to prison eight years ago for his part in a heroin trafficking ring, to unleashing an explosively violent attempt to control the city’s territory.
Despite having his citizenship revoked and deported upon his release, Hamad – known to everyone, including the police, as Kaz – has been able to maintain tight control over his criminal empire in Australia through encrypted communications from Dubai and elsewhere. from the Middle East.
Kaz Hamad (left) was only revealed as a key figure in Melbourne’s underworld on Tuesday after an eight-and-a-half-year suppression order was lifted.
Police suspect Hamad (centre) of leading an illicit tobacco turf war that has seen more than 30 firebomb attacks in Melbourne.
One of dozens of tobacco shops that have burned down as Hamad moves into the territory of a notorious criminal network that runs the city’s tobacco black market.
Hamad emigrated to Australia with his family when he was 14 in 1998 and settled in Melbourne, a far cry from the sweltering southern Iraqi city of Basra where he was born.
His first run-in with the law was just three years later, in 2001, when he was arrested at age 17. reports The Agewho spoke to police and underworld sources to compile a brief history of Hamad.
Despite constantly appearing on the police radar, it was not until August 2011 that he served his first prison term.
That year he was sentenced to 30 months for kidnapping and assault and was suspected of involvement in at least three other gangster control incidents, although witnesses were too frightened to speak.
According to psychological reports presented to the court, his family briefly returned to Iraq after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime and his brother was killed in a bomb attack in 2009, which has some influence on Hamad’s ruthlessness in criminal circles.
He formed a close network of associates in Melbourne’s west and was close to well-known former Bandidos biker boss Toby Mitchell.
He had a string of minor convictions, including assault, armed robbery and burglary.
But in December 2014, he was charged with felony drug trafficking charges when detectives unraveled a $6 million heroin smuggling ring. He was subsequently released on bail.
Four months later, in April 2015, he appeared in a newspaper for the first time when his wife Safa’s brother, Khalad Abouhasna, 39, was shot dead in the driveway of their Altona Meadows home.
Hamad narrowly escaped being shot and a month later a court issued a suppression order for his own protection.
Hamad was a mid-level actor in the Melbourne underworld ten years ago (pictured in 2015) but was sentenced to eight years in jail for heroin trafficking.
CCTV showed an arsonist catching fire when he tried to firebomb a Melbourne tobacco shop earlier this year.
Detectives allege he made connections in jail that he now uses to control his turf in the city despite living in Dubai and other Middle Eastern sanctuaries.
In September 2015, his citizenship was revoked over his arrest for heroin trafficking and he was sent to an immigration detention center on Christmas Island with the then-Liberal government’s intention to send him back to Iraq.
While there he continued to operate his fledgling criminal network using burner phones until a judge ordered him to return to Melbourne to answer drug trafficking charges.
He was then sent to Victoria’s notorious Barwon prison, with his sentence reduced to eight years after handing over his weapons cache and a successful appeal.
He used his time in prison to establish connections with other important organized crime figures.
Hamad’s release from prison and deportation this year appear to have only fueled his determination to assert his influence in Melbourne, with the city rocked by more than 30 firebomb attacks on tobacco shops as he reportedly tries to take over the lucrative black market in tobacco.
Detectives believe some of the arson attacks are ordered by a former criminal network that controls the trade to protect its territory, but most are orchestrated by Hamad.
In July, the war reached a new level when the resting place of Meshilin Marrogi, the sister of Hamad’s rival George Marrogi, was raided on the second level of a mausoleum in Preston Cemetery.
He died of Covid in 2021.
CCTV was released of two men breaking into the venue in fright and trying to drag his coffin away, but instead they smashed a glass panel and stole a $100,000 diamond ring when they discovered the lift was broken.
Meshilin Marrogi’s coffin was opened by two men on July 30 in a plot to desecrate his body, but they were thwarted by a broken elevator.
Images of Notorious Crime Family founder George Marrogi with his sister. They were displayed for his funeral, which Marrogi missed because he was in jail.
Police suspect Hamad ordered the robbery because of a bitter dispute with Marrogi, who is serving a long prison sentence for drug trafficking and for the 2016 daylight shooting of Hamad’s associate, Kadir Ors.
Although he was never previously charged, police allegedly suspect that Marrogi was involved in ordering the 2015 attack that led to Abouhasna’s death and that the intended target was actually Hamad.
He is suspected of having shot Ors dead to avoid a rumor of retaliation.
Then, in August this year, underworld figure Mohammed Akbar Keshtiar, known as ‘Afghan Ali’, was shot dead in South Yarra, Melbourne, at around 11.40pm on a Friday night, just meters from the Busy nightlife area of Chapel Street.
Keshtiar, 53, had emigrated to Australia as a teenager and had been involved in the city’s criminal networks since at least 2000, when Hamad had first made his mark.
Earlier this month, Victoria Police said a central figure was involved in the recent rise in crime in Melbourne, but did not reveal his name.
At a press conference last week, Detective Inspector Graham Banks of Victoria Police’s Lunar Task Force said the man suspected of ordering the theft of Marrogi’s coffin was also suspected of “running a major criminal enterprise that is affecting not only to Victoria but to other states. ‘.
‘He is directing, we would say, most of the crimes that have been the reason why this task force has been set up. He directs it from the top of the pyramid.
“I am concerned about the recklessness of this particular group.”
‘It’s something that is emerging across Australia, where we have high-level organized criminals living overseas and causing harm to the community. They do so with reckless abandon, because they are often in non-extradition countries.
Hamad’s identity suppression order, which was extended to eight and a half years, expired on Tuesday, allowing him to finally be unmasked as the man police say is a key player in the recent escalation of tensions.
Unmasked alleged Melbourne crime boss Kaz Hamad (left) in the AFL with former Bandido rider Toby Mitchell (centre) and Mongolian rider Tyrone Bell (right).
Hamad had his visa canceled when he was first sent to Christmas Island and was sent to Iraq immediately after his release from prison, but he stayed there only briefly.
He moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where he had been waging his turf war on tobacco, but was recently ousted courtesy of pressure from Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.
He is understood to still be in the Middle East, although authorities have not revealed his whereabouts.