Muslim Crime Lords in Melbourne

Inside the making of a crime lord: Full untold story of Melbourne gang boss Kazem Hamad as he is unmasked and his reign of terror is exposed

• Melbourne crime kingpin Kazem Hamad revealed 
• He is alleged to be directing illegal tobacco turf war 
• READ MORE: Melbourne gang figure 'Afghan Ali' gunned down

A ruthless gangland kingpin causing widespread havoc on the streets of Melbourne, despite being deported overseas, has been unmasked for the first time. 

Kazem 'Kaz' Hamad, 39, is suspected by detectives of leading a powerful Middle Eastern organised crime network continuing to run amok in the city as he pulls the strings from foreign sanctuaries like Dubai. 

Police believe Hamad is behind a recent wave of criminal activity - including the fire-bombing of multiple tobacco stores, a murder and a plot to desecrate the grave of the sister of a gangland rival - since he was released from prison earlier this year. 

Hamad is understood to have gone from 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 turf.

Even though his citizenship was revoked and he was deported upon his release Hamad - known by everyone including police as Kaz - has been able to keep a tight grip on his criminal empire in Australia via encrypted communications from Dubai and other Middle Eastern locations.

Kaz Hamad (left) could only be revealed as a key figure in the Melbourne underworld on Tuesday after an eight-and-half-year suppression order was lifted 

Hamad (centre) is suspected by police of directing an illicit tobacco turf war that has seen more then 30 fire-bombings carried out in Melbourne

One of the dozens of smoke shops that have gone up in flames as Hamad muscles in on the turf of a well known crime network that runs the city's tobacco black market

Hamad emigrated to Australia with his family as a 14-year-old in 1998 and settled in Melbourne, a far cry from the sweltering southern Iraq city of Basra where he was born.

His first proper run-in with the law was just three years later in 2001 when he was arrested aged 17, reports the The Age, who spoke with police and gangland sources to compile a brief history of Hamad.

Despite consistently popping up on the police radar, it wasn't until August 2011 that he did his first proper jail stint. 

In that year he was sentenced to 30 months for kidnapping and bashing and was suspected of being involved in at least three other gangland enforcement incidents, though witnesses were too scared to speak. 

According to psychological reports tendered to the court, his family briefly returned to Iraq following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime and his brother was killed in a 2009 bombing attack, 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 bikie boss Toby Mitchell.

He had a string of smaller convictions including for assault, armed robbery and burglary. 

But in December 2014, he was charged with serious drug trafficking offences when detectives cracked a $6million heroin smuggling network. He was later released on bail.

Four months later in April 2015, he first made newspapers when the brother of his wife Safa, 39-year-old Khalad Abouhasna, was gunned down in the driveway of his Altona Meadows home.

Hamad narrowly escaped getting shot himself and one month later a court issued a suppression order on his identity for his own protection. 

Hamad was a mid-level player in Melbourne's underworld ten years ago (pictured in 2015) but was sentenced to eight years jail for heroin trafficking

CCTV showed an arsonist catch fire himself when he tried to fire-bomb a Melbourne tobacco shop earlier this year 

Detectives allege he made connections in jail which he is now using to control his turf in the city despite living in Dubai and other Middle Eastern sanctuaries

By September 2015 his citizenship was revoked over his heroin trafficking arrest and he was sent to an immigration detention centre on Christmas Island with the intention of the then-Liberal government to send him back to Iraq.

While there he continued to operate his fledging criminal network using burner phones until a judge ordered him to return to Melbourne to answer to the 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 jail stint to build connections to other major organised crime figures. 

Hamad's release from prison and deportation this year seems to have only fuelled his determination to assert his influence in Melbourne, with the city rocked by more than 30 tobacco store fire-bombings as he allegedly attempts to muscle in on the lucrative tobacco black market. 

Detectives believe some of the arsons are ordered by a longstanding crime network that controls the trade to protect their turf, but the majority are orchestrated by Hamad. 

In July, the war hit a new low with the resting place of Meshilin Marrogi, the sister of Hamad's rival George Marrogi, broken into on the second level of a mausoleum in Preston cemetery. 

She died from Covid in 2021. 

CCTV was released of two men breaking into the scared site and attempting to drag away her coffin, but instead smashing a glass panel and stealing a $100,000 diamond ring when they discovered the lift was broken.

Meshilin Marrogi's casket was busted open by two men on July 30 in a plot desecrate her body but they were thwarted by a broken lift 

Pictures of Notorious Crime Family founder George Marrogi with his sister. They were put on display for her funeral, which Marrogi missed because he was in jail 

Police suspect Hamad ordered the theft due to a bitter feud with Marrogi, who is serving a long prison sentence for drug trafficking and the 2016 broad daylight shooting of Hamad's associate Kadir Ors.

Though never formerly charged, police reportedly suspect Marrogi was involved in ordering the 2015 hit that led to Abouhasna's death and that the intended target was actually Hamad. 

He is suspected to have gunned down Ors to prevent a rumoured retaliation hit. 

Then in August this year underworld figure Mohammed Akbar Keshtiar, known as 'Afghan Ali', was gunned down in Melbourne's South Yarra about 11.40pm on a Friday night just metres from busy nightlife hotspot of Chapel Street.

Keshtiar, 53, had emigrated to Australia as a teenager and was involved in the city's criminal networks since at least 2000, when Hamad had been first making his mark. 

Earlier this month, Victoria police said a central figure was involved in Melbourne's recent crime surge but did not reveal a name.

At a press conference last week, Detective Inspector Graham Banks of Victoria Police's Lunar taskforce, said the man suspected to be behind ordering the theft of Ms Marrogi's coffin was also suspected of 'leading a significant criminal enterprise which is impacting not just Victoria but other states'.

'He is directing, we would say, the majority of the crime that's been the subject of why this taskforce has been stood up. He's directing it from the top of the pyramid.'

'I'm concerned about the recklessness of this group in particular.'

'It's a thing that's emerging across Australia where we have high-level organised criminals living overseas, directing harm into the community. Reckless abandon is how they go about it because they're often in countries without extradition.'   

The suppression order on Hamad's identity, which was extended to eight-and-half years expired on Tuesday allowing him to be finally unmasked as the man police allege is a key player in the recent escalating tensions.

Unmasked alleged Melbourne crime kingpin Kaz Hamad (left) at the AFL with ex-Bandido bikie Toby Mitchell (centre) and Mongol bikie Tyrone Bell (right)  

Hamad had his visa was cancelled when he was first sent to Christmas Island and was sent packing to Iraq immediately on his release from prison but stayed there only briefly.

He moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where he had been directing his tobacco turf war but was recently booted out courtesy of lobbying by Victoria Police, Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. 

He is understood to be still in the Middle East though authorities have not revealed his whereabouts. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12852067/Melbourne-gang-boss-Kazem-Hamad-unmasked.html

Fire damage at a tobacco shop, one of more than 30 arson attacks staged during “tobacco wars” between Kazem Hamad and a notorious Melbourne crime family

CCTV footage of an arson incident in Moonee Ponds on May 26, 2023, where the offender catches alight.

The aftermath of a suspicious fire in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.

The Arab Mindset

By Alex Grobman, PhD

“In Palestine I had been met every day by evidence of the Jewish blindness to the Arab problem,” asserted Richard Crossman, British Labor M.P., who served as a member of the 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. “I was constantly reminded of the gallant politics of Vienna Socialists in 1934. There was the same misguided reliance of foreign aid, the same underestimation of the enemy, the same blind assurance a cause which is right is also strong.”

In the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, the media and pundits have been quick to note that Israel had been warned about an attack by Hamas--years, months, days and even hours before this catastrophe occurred, shocking the nation and world Jewry to its very core. An Israeli state commission will eventually investigate how this colossal failure in intelligence occurred. Hubris, the lack of humility, negligence, arrogantly dismissing intelligence assessments of a potential Hamas military confrontation, complacency, and refusal to share intelligence with other members of the government are clear contributing factors leading to this debacle.

Citing senior IDF intelligence officer Miri Eisin, The Washington Post reported that Hamas attempted to "lull Israel into complacency" by organizing large demonstrations at the Gaza border months prior to the attack, "to get the IDF used to the sight of crowds at the border." Hamas even shared information about Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), demonstrating its eagerness not to engage in serious confrontation.

Yet it was a “blindness to the Arab problem,” and lack of historical perspective that led Major-General Aharon Haliva, IDF's Military Intelligence Directorate, and others to believe that in Gaza, “our military force and deterrence,” and efforts “to stabilize the economy, allow in workers, and improve the quality of life all have the potential to create years of quiet.” He made this prediction in June 2021, and again in September 2022, writes Yaakov Katz, former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.

What is the Jewish blindness? Understanding that the Arabs in Judea and Samaria and Gaza Strip do not want peace as Arabic scholar Mordechai Kedar explained. Judaism is considered a “false religion” (Din Al-Batel), while the “religion of truth is Islam "(Din Al-Haq). From this the Islamic position, it is impossible to have a Jewish state.

Destroying the Jewish state is a religious imperative. Article 15 of the Hamas Charter states: “The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.”

Financial Incentives Have Never Succeeded

Attempts to convince the Arabs they had more to gain materially by embracing the efforts of Jews to improve their economic well-being has been an ongoing process, which has been doomed to failure from the start. Zionist historian Yosef Gorny notes that in 1907, Yitzhak Epstein declared that the Arab people "must, for its own good let the Jews into the country, for it is powerless to improve its situation and to extricate itself from its poverty and ignorance by its own efforts; only our people can provide for their needs." It was to be a win-win situation. The Jews would reclaim their homeland and the Arabs would be able to improve their lives. This would hasten “the renaissance of two ancient and gifted Semitic people with great potentialities, who complement each other.”

In 1921, Winston Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, echoed the same theme of "economic blessing" on a visit to Palestine. He urged the Arabs to give Zionism a "fair chance," since Zionism would be "accompanied by a general diffusion of wealth and well-being and by an advance in the social, scientific and cultural life of the people as a whole." He concluded by urging the Arabs to recognize the promising possibilities that lay ahead: “If instead of sharing miseries through quarrels you will share blessings through cooperation, a bright and tranquil future lies before your country.”

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, said he shared the view of many early Zionists that Jews would be welcomed back to the land of Israel once the economic progress they brought with them “would convey a blessing to the Arab people.”

Years later he admitted that he was “naïve then to imagine …that the Arabs think like us.” In 1936, he acknowledged that “the economic blessing” had no impact on Arab leaders: “Even if they admit—and not all of them do—that our immigration brings material blessing to the land, [t]hey say—and from the Arab viewpoint I think rightly so-‘None of your honey and none of your sting.’”

While signing the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, Shimon Peres remarked: “I could almost sense the breeze of a fresh spring, and my imagination began to wander to the skies of our land that may have become brighter to the eyes of all people, agreeing and opposing. On the lawn, you could almost hear the heavy tread of boots leaving the stage after a hundred years of hostility. You could have listened to the gentle tiptoeing of new steps making a debut in the awaiting world of peace.”

Having failed to learn from Ben-Gurion’s experiences, Peres assured his listeners that: “A higher standard of living is a precondition for mitigating the tensions among the Middle Eastern countries,” adding that he wanted to fight poverty in the region “as if it were a military threat.”

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of the Zionist Revisionist movement, understood the futility of trying to convince the Arabs that their lives would be better because of the Jewish presence in Palestine. As far back as November 1937, Jabotinsky publicly warned of the folly of trying to entice the Arabs with economic riches. In the November 26, 1937 edition of South Africa's The Jewish Herald he said, “The Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains…To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow upon them is infantile. This childish fantasy… comes from some kind of contempt for the Arab people, of some kind of unfounded view of this race as a rabble ready to be bribed in order to sell out their homeland for a railroad network.”

Furthermore, “As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us,” he proclaimed” they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders whose watchword is "Never!"

Writing In 1946 George Antonius, an Arab nationalist, reiterated this point when he said, “no room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the nation in possession.” Of course, one must make a distinction between the implacable Palestinian Arabs who seek to destroy Israel and that of other Arabs who may have reconciled themselves to living in the ancestral home of the Jewish people.

Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and on the advisory board of The National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI). He lives in Jerusalem.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/381717

How Hamas Steals from Pallys: "All Aid Goes Underground Into the Tunnels"

Hamas terrorists are accused by Palestinians of stealing food and vital aid from desperate families. All aid goes underground and is not reaching people in need.

A fearless elderly woman in Gaza risked her life to speak out against Hamas, accusing the terror group of stealing food and vital aid from desperate families, as other Palestinians call for the terrorists downfall.

Footage showed her wagging her finger at a TV news reporter as she claimed that 'all aid goes down underground' to tunnel networks used by Hamas.

This is common knowledge in Gaza, Hamas then sells some of the food on the black market.

She said Hamas may shoot her for dissent.

Last night, other Palestinians also spoke out to claim Hamas steals their food, loots their homes and tries to lure Israel into bombing civilians.

The elderly woman in a headscarf was filmed berating an Al Jazeera reporter who suggested international aid was not reaching her due to the 'difficult' situation.

Last night, other Palestinians also spoke out to claim Hamas had looted their homes and lured Israeli bombing raids on to civilian areas

She told him: 'All aid goes down underground. The aid does not reach the nation and the entire people. A lot is coming. What comes is only a little and it is distributed – so they say.'

As the reporter again suggested the situation was 'difficult', the woman shook her finger in front of a shocked crowd of Palestinians and said: 'Everything goes to their houses. They take it, they will even shoot me and do whatever they want to me, Hamas.'

In separate footage, a young Palestinian mother also accused Hamas of stealing aid. Cradling her baby, she told a reporter she wanted her message to 'reach all countries of the world'.

She added: 'You send us humanitarian aid but I swear to God that we get nothing. Only if we chase them and beg. They mock us when we ask. They humiliate us.'

She said Hamas 'take advantage of us', adding: 'May God take revenge on them.'

Last night, a father-of-two in Gaza told The Mail on Sunday that ordinary people wanted Hamas to fall.

'This is the shared dream of Gaza,' he said, on condition of anonymity, as part of a press call by The Centre for Peace Communications.

Despite living under constant Israeli bombardment, he said: 'We are afraid most of Hamas.'

He said Hamas was monitoring social media for dissent, adding: 'I heard they have taken people and executed them. They will accuse any person of being an agent and they are disappeared.'

READ MORE: Hamas have refused to release ten female hostages 'because they do not want the women to reveal what they have been subjected to while held captive'

He said his brother was murdered by Hamas when it seized power in 2007 and rounded up political opponents. He added his neighbourhood was ransacked by Hamas looters at the outbreak of this war on October 7, when the terrorists killed more than 1,200 civilians and took 240 men, women and children hostage.

'My house and the whole neighbourhood was completely cleared out,' he said. 'Not just my house, the whole neighborhood.' ‘Who can steal all this stuff? They need cars and trucks to carry all of these materials, all the food and money from the houses. There is no Israeli army in that area, so the only party that can be responsible for that is Hamas.’

He claimed Hamas fighters were 'hiding among the people' and luring IDF bombs onto civilian shelters and hospitals. They place terrorists on the roofs of hospitals and schools, adding: 'It's just like telling Israel, 'Come and bomb this place'.

An injured Palestinian man at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital was seen telling an al-Jazeera reporter that Hamas were hiding among patients.

He said: ‘They come and hide among the people. Why are they hiding among the people? 

Israeli Lt Col Richard Hecht said it was doing 'everything it could' to get aid into Gaza.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12846201/Hamas-terrorists-accused-Palestinians-stealing-food-vital-aid-desperate-families.html