Occupied Territories.
SMH
Les Kennedy, Eamonn Duff and Manuel Mitternacht
March 15, 2009
THE head of one of Sydney's most powerful drug dealing crime syndicates was shot dead in a drive-by shooting at a busy intersection yesterday, sparking police fears the brazen killing in front of pedestrians would reignite a gang war.
As police called for calm among members of Sydney's Middle Eastern community last night the dead man was named as Abdul Qadier Darwiche, 37, of Condell Park, whose younger brother Adnan "Eddie" Darwiche, of Lakemba, is serving life for double murder.
Police said Darwiche died in a hail of at least six gunshots fired into his moving vehicle by gunmen in a silver four-wheel-drive as he was driving along Miller Road, Bass Hill, near the intersection of Liverpool Road, at 3.45pm.
Within seconds his vehicle careered off the road and into a park, crashing into a gum tree with Darwiche dead behind the wheel. Police would not say if a weapon was found inside his car, a black Triton utility, but confirmed the attack followed an argument with a group of men in a nearby street.
In September 2007 police publicly identified Abdul Darwiche as the head of a "criminal syndicate" when Detective Inspector Michael Ryan told the Administrative Decisions Tribunal that Darwiche's family controlled drug networks in the city's south-west.
Inspector Ryan named the head of the family syndicate as Abdul Darwiche, who in 2006 was found not guilty of the attempted murder of Farouk "Frank" Razzak, alleged to have headed a rival clan.
It was the first time police publicly named someone as the head of a family-based Middle Eastern crime syndicate. Abdul Darwiche strongly denied the allegations at the time, saying the police claims were based on unfounded rumour and speculation, and said police had a personal vendetta against him.
The allegations, in which police also alleged Abdul Darwiche carried a gun down the back of his pants, came to light when he appealed to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal after the Tow Truck Authority refused his application for a tow truck licence on the grounds that he was not of good character.
Inspector Ryan told the tribunal a former associate of Abdul Darwiche had informed police that he sold cannabis and amphetamines for him "from 1996 onwards".
Adnan Darwiche was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2006 for a double murder committed with three others during a bloody inter-family drug feud in Sydney's south-west that was investigated by the forerunner to the Middle Eastern Crime Squad, Task Force Gain.
The taskforce was set up in 2003 to end a bloody series of drive-by shootings involving the Darwiche and Razzak families.
Adnan Darwiche is serving natural life jail terms in the Supermax high security jail in Goulburn for murdering Ziad Razzak and young mother Mervat Nemra.
Ms Nemra was an innocent bystander whose home Ziad Razzak was using as a safe house while being hunted by rival drug dealers.
" The Religion of Peace"
Both were killed when Adnan Darwiche and three others fired more than 100 bullets from Russian military AK-47 assault rifles and an M1 machine-gun into the Greenacre house where the two were sleeping.
Adnan Darwiche's Supreme Court trial in 2006 was told that that the dispute between him and another relative Bilal Razzak erupted in 2001 over drug-dealing boundaries and a broken marriage between Darwiche's sister, Khadige, and Ali Abdul-Razzak.
In August, 2003 Ali Abdul-Razzak was shot dead by three unidentified gunmen as he walked from prayers at the Lakemba Mosque. His killers have not been found.
Police who rushed to the scene of yesterday's shooting were quick to say that the shooting had not stemmed from road rage, saying Abdul Darwiche appeared to have been deliberately targeted by a gunman in a silver coloured Honda CRV four-wheel-drive vehicle. Detectives from the Middle Eastern Crime Squad joined Homicide investigators and Bankstown police in the investigation last night.
The shooting was seen by a number of customers, staff and children in a small shopping centre and service station bordering the intersection. They were in the nearby kebab shop, Subway and chemist shop and United service station.
Police cordoned off the park where the dead man's vehicle came to a halt and placed a tarpaulin over the vehicle to protect clues for crime scene investigators as the body lay slumped inside.