Confronting images have emerged from inside the gym where a Comanchero bikie was gunned down alongside his brother, with paramedics seen desperately trying to revive the bloodied pair.
The outlaw motorcycle club’s boss Tarek Zahed is now miraculously in a stable condition in hospital after being shot in a hail of bullets during a workout with his younger brother – also a notorious gangland figure.
Zahed and Omar were shot multiple times inside the Bodyfit gym in Sydney’s Auburn on Tuesday night at about 8pm, leaving both men with catastrophic injuries.
Omar, 39, went into cardiac arrest after suffering several gunshot wounds to his stomach, arms and legs – later dying at the scene.
His bikie enforcer brother, 41, was hit by 10 bullets to his body, including to his head, before being rushed to Westmead Hospital where he is understood to have gruesome injuries.
In the weeks leading up to the horror shooting Zahed was warned by organised crime detectives to ‘stop going to the gym, change your routine’.
His friends even begged him to ‘play it safe’ and stop after learning that $1million bounty had been put out on him by rivals.
Investigators are now probing whether the latest shooting in Sydney’s tit-for-tat crime saga is linked to the execution of Mahmoud ‘Brownie’ Ahmad two weeks earlier – as police sources reveal to Daily Mail Australia that ‘retaliation’ for the hit will be ‘huge’.
onsidered the ‘heaviest hitter in Australia,’ insiders say there will be further escalation in the gangland war gripping Sydney’s southwest.
‘Whoever has done this is game to go toe-to-toe with the Comancheros. Nobody does that,’ the police source said. ‘It’s the biggest hit of the year.’
Whoever carried out the contract shooting will be ‘sweating on updates about his condition’.
‘They’d be hoping Tarek dies, so at least they got the job done. The retaliation from this will be huge,’ the source said.
But detectives don’t yet have any solid leads or ideas as to who might have been behind the hit.
While the deadly shooting is thought to be retaliation for the killing of Hamzy-linked Ahmad on April 27 in Greenacre, investigators and underworld sources say the the situation is not that clear cut.
Over a dozen bodies have lined Sydney’s streets as part of the long-running feud between the Hamzy and Alameddine crime clans – but both networks have many enemies.
‘Some of these people are in conflict with a number of other groups so it can be hard to determine whether if it is a direct retaliation or not. But that is certainly a key line of inquiry,’ NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb told 2GB radio.
arek was regarded as a marked man by heavyweights of the Hamzy crime network long before the bounty was recently placed on his head.
That’s largely because the Comancheros are in bed with the Alameddine crime family and act as muscle for their drug network.
By extension of that relationship, the Alameddine’s rivals the Hamzy family are considered enemies of the Comancheros.
But the Hamzy network is in a world of pain itself as top members have been ‘picked off like flies’ in recent months.
‘The trouble is these figures in these crime gangs have so many enemies there are just so many potential suspects,’ forensic criminologist Dr Xanthé Mallett told the Today show.
‘There are several rival gangs involved in this and several reasons why this happens. It is about control of territory, control of the drug trade and it is also about those family and gang ties.
‘One of the others issues is that people don’t speak, there is a code of silence around these events.
‘Even If police have a suspect or a witness it is unlikely they will speak. That makes it very hard to investigate and understand.’
But NSW Supreme Court documents highlight the spiraling tensions between the two gangs.
Police intercepted a call between jailed Brothers 4 Life gang boss Bassam Hamzy and his brother Ghassan Amoun on October 14, 2020.
Hamzy called his brother from Goulburn Supermax jail asking for Tarek’s phone number, the court documents reveal.
‘Hamzy asked Amoun to contact Emad Sleiman and ‘tell him straight out is he speaking with Tarek Zahed, if he is, get Tarek Zahed’s number off him.’
Amoun said Zahed was in jail, but Hamzy said Zahed was definitely not in jail.
‘It was highly likely Zahed was at risk from Hamzy and Hamzy’s associates in the community.’
Fifteen months later, Amoun was gunned down as he left a beauty salon at Wentworthville in Sydney’s west.
Several days after Ahmad’s death, Zahred, known as the ‘Balenciaga Bikie’, was arrested and charged with two counts of contravening serious crime prevention order as NSW Police continued its crackdown on organised crime.
The 41-year-old had is believed to have taken over as national president of the Comancheros after former leader Mick Murray was recently arrested.
It’s understood he had been aware his life had been in danger for almost a year and was granted a travel exemption to flee NSW lockdown to travel to Turkey last September.
He continued his lavish lifestyle upon return to Australia, despite warnings from police his life was under threat.
Tarek moved to Melbourne, where he was infamously caught interrupting play at the Australian Open men’s final in January.
Police have launched an investigation into Tuesday night’s shooting with the assistance of police attached to the State Crime Command’s Raptor and Criminal Groups Squads.