Police frustrated by criminal silence around Greenacre following Khaled Kahwaji execution
Yoni Bashan
The Daily Telegraph
October 12,2013
THE gangland execution of drug-peddler and one-time murder suspect Khaled Kahwaji would have been solved much sooner if it had only happened somewhere else - anywhere else but Greenacre.
In this crime hive of south-western Sydney, witnesses curiously never speak up. It's the Greenacre code.
Kahwaji, 29, from Rhodes, was not a sophisticated or endearing criminal. Nor were his final moments, about 6.10pm on March 15, the stuff that romantic gangster stories are made of.
Greenacre shooting victim Khaled Kahwaj refused to name his killer
He was no match for the man who shot him, point blank, in his Mazda 3 at a house on Wilbur St.
His attackers knew he was coming because of his penchant for blaring loud music from his car speakers - they could hear him from blocks away.
A crucial person of interest, who police need to contact, was captured on a nearby CCTV camera a day earlier, shortly after Mr Kahwaji was involved in a fight on Wilbur St. His image is published here for the first time.
No one has been charged over the murder but enough people saw it, watching as two cars - a Toyota Corolla and a Hyundai hatchback - fled the scene.
Frustrated by witnesses refusing to co-operate, police have taken the unusual step of charging four people - including three women - who they believe are holding back crucial information.
They include Sabrine Chahine, 25, the registered owner of one car seen driving away after the murder. She was charged with refusing to say who was in the vehicle.
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The second car was a rental, hired by her sister-in-law Sabayda Hawa, 30, who is now facing court on the same offence.
The others are Bilal Assoum, 36, and his former girlfriend, Lisa Salmon, 25. Detectives believe they saw everything, but they allegedly told investigators nothing, prompting both to be charged with concealing a serious offence.
While Sydney is all too familiar with premeditated, organised assassinations, Kahwaji's death was carried out with no effort by the killers to cover their tracks. They did not bother sourcing stolen getaway cars, obscuring the vehicles' license plates, covering their faces or using a silencer.
Kahwaji, a former rubbish collector, spent 10 months on remand over the 2010 murder of 26-year-old Saba Kairouz, a drug supplier shot dead as he played football at Greenacre's Roberts Park.
Dozens of people saw the murder but the case struggled in court. The witness box stayed empty.
Ironically, the Greenacre code that saved Kahwaji from prison now threatens to save his own killers from justice.
Eight months after his death, homicide detectives have mapped Kahwaji's final hours.
The day before he was killed he was seen carrying a gun around the time he was involved in a fight on Wilbur St. Police were called but he ran off when he saw the officers.
That night he slept at a brothel in Petersham, on Parramatta Rd, where he was a regular, arriving about 1am and getting evicted for abusing workers about 10 hours later.
Strung out on drugs and behaving erratically, he loitered at an associate's car workshop in Punchbowl, vandalising cars in the area before driving back to Wilbur St for reasons unknown.
After the murder, heavily armed tactical officers searched the homes of both the Hawa and Assoum families, usin loudspeakers to order the occupants to come outside. The Hawa's have since moved from the area.
Police say crime is so embedded in the Greenacre community psyche that criminals no longer care about possible witnesses - they know no one will speak.
"A murder such as this was carried out on the strong belief that the public would not be willing to assist the police and that is what has occurred," Detective Acting Superintendent Angelo Memmolo said, stressing the need for more people to come forward to help solve the murder.
"If people want to remain safe and don't want these shootings to continue, they need to come forward."
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