Sydney's Cocaine Wars

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Sydney, Australia, like many large cities has a problem with gangland turf and drug violence. Cocaine seems to be at the centre of the latest fighting in that city. The Australian police are about as capable of dealing with the problem as police in other major cities around the world.

Crimson flowers in supermarket wrapping, tied to a pole on a grim corner in Sydney’s traffic-snarled southwest, mark the spot where David Stemler died in a burst of bullets before dawn.

A fine-featured man with a sprawling neck tattoo, Stemler was the 23rd person to die in drug wars that have led to executions, maimings and kidnappings across Sydney over the past two years.

Police officers partially covered his body with tarpaulin to hide it before children could see it on their way to school in the morning. Nonetheless, a photograph of pupils walking past Stemler’s corpse while forensic investigators worked at the scene infuriated politicians and brought an apology from New South Wales police, a force under siege.

“It was shocking, mate, shocking,” a neighbour told The Times as he described the five loud shots that had jolted him from his sleep at 2am. “There was a body on the footpath . . . blood everywhere. We’re scared, mate. Everybody here is.”

‘Wall of silence’
In little over a week in Sydney, there have been two murders and five shootings including the ambush of a young, well-regarded criminal lawyer.

Mahmoud Abbas, 30, was gunned down as he climbed into his new BMW to drive to work last Wednesday morning. Wounded in the chest by an unknown assailant, Abbas had no unlawful involvement in Sydney’s lucrative cocaine trade. But he had defended criminals within it and is now in hospital in a critical condition.

Behind the turf war between rival gangs lies Sydney’s cocaine problem. Consumption, according to recent official figures, is growing. The more the city’s residents crave cocaine, the greater the chance of violence between syndicates trying to corner the market.

Police chiefs admit they are struggling to contain the shootings and fear more bloodshed. Two female associates of gangland figures were killed last year on their way to an engagment party, a killing that particularly incensed Karen Webb, the police commissioner.

“We’ve hit a wall of silence,” the force’s deputy commissioner, David Hudson, said. “We’ve had victims who have survived their attacks who refused to speak to us, refused to tell us why they were a target.”

More than 100 police officers are working full time to stop the shootings and solve the backlog of unsolved murders, most of which are linked to Middle Eastern crime syndicates involved in supplying cocaine to the city’s wealthy eastern suburbs.

Data released by Australia’s domestic intelligence agency a fortnight ago showed that Sydney was consuming 13 doses of cocaine per 1,000 people a day, up from the three a year ago. Arrests for cocaine use in the city’s east are triple those elsewhere.

Demand for cocaine is fuelling easy profits for drug cartels who, police say, are importing the drug from the United States and Europe, where the street price is a sixth of what they can get in Sydney. Australians pay among the highest prices in the world, at about £130 to £200 a gram; only Gulf states with death penalties for drug crimes fetch higher prices.

One man who profited immensely was Alen Moradian, who died alone and fast in his black Audi when the gunmen hiding in the garage of his luxury Bondi apartment building put seven bullets into him on a Tuesday morning last month.

Moradian, who had been hiding out in the rented flat after police warned him that criminal rivals wanted him dead, was a kingpin in Sydney’s cocaine pipeline and his execution is credited with triggering the surge in violence.

In 2011, after he admitted that his Golden Gun drug syndicate was behind the arrival of 200kg of cocaine to Sydney, a judge gave him ten years. He was out within eight and returned to his wife and their northwestern Sydney mansion where, police claimed in court, they dined off golden Versace cutlery beneath a painted ceiling inspired by the Sistine Chapel.

In emails tendered during those court proceedings, Moradian’s wife, Natasha Youkhana, pleaded with her husband to abandon his ostentation and instead adopt the low-key, suburban lifestyle of the television series The Sopranos.

“Why do you just sit there and show off. Do you see Tony Soprano doing that?” she wrote, adding with a worthy prescience: “You, on the other hand, want the attention, you get a big head, you love it. People like that won’t survive.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bodi ... -lmr62nf7r

[Laan Yaa Mo]

A friend of mine from Sydney, who now lives in Toronto, wrote me this:

All these crimes are happening where I grew up. And committed by people I grew up with…. Sydney is beautifully dangerous

[jackspratt]

Is your friend either of middle eastern descent, or a former bikie/associate, Uncle?

If you look up the names of the victims, they seem to fit almost exclusively into either one or both of the above cohorts.

[noosard]

July 27th
Ferenc David Stemler is shot dead outside his inner west home in Canterbury. The 28-year-old was talking with two people before being gunned down, police said.

July 26 – 10.25am
image 1
Criminal defence lawyer Mahmoud Abbas is shot in the driveway of his home in south-west Sydney's Greenacre in what police branded a “brazen and targeted attack”. Abbas, 30, was taken to hospital after stumbling back to his house with wounds to his torso and leg.

July 23 – 2.15am
image 2
Three people are shot while sitting in their cars in Mayvic Street, Greenacre. The man police believe was the intended target died in hospital on Thursday. The other victims were hit while parked 50 metres down the road.

July 7 – 2pm
image 3
Two men are shot in a hair salon on Marrickville Road in the inner west. Both survive.

June 27 – 8am
image 4
Sydney crime figure Alen Moradian is ambushed and killed by two gunmen in the carpark beneath his Bondi Junction home. Police believe the two assassins dumped a grey Porsche Macan (pictured) in a nearby street but failed to burn the luxury car, leaving a gun behind.

June 11 – 4.30pm
image 5
A man in his 40s dies after being found with a gunshot wound to his left shoulder at Factory Street, Granville. Two groups of men met at the scene prior to the incident, which was probably linked to organised crime, police said.

May 23 – 4pm
image 6
Marvin Oraiha (pictured) is shot dead while sitting in his car in a suburban street at Elizabeth Hills in Sydney’s west. Police suspect he had links to organised crime. Police found two cars on fire at separate locations.

March 2 – 6.30am
image 7
Taha Sabbagh, 40, is shot dead in front of his son in Sefton, breaking a six-month lull in gangland-style shootings in Sydney. Sabbagh parked his car outside Elite Fight Force martial arts gym, planning to train with his 12-year-old son.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/syd ... 5drp3.html

[noosard]

Not just Sydney


There are fears of all-out Middle Eastern gang warfare in Melbourne after the grave of the sister of a major crime gang boss was desecrated over the weekend..
Vandals broke into the Preston General Cemetery in Melbourne on Sunday night and smashed the grave of Meshlin Marrogi, the sister of jailed underworld figure George Marrogi.

Horrifyingly, Ms Marrogi’s coffin was dragged a short distance before it too was opened and abandoned.

The low act is been treated as a warning shot against her brother, the Herald Sun reports.

Police regarded Ms Marrogi as key to the rise of her brother’s crime family empire.

Mr Marrogi was jailed for a maximum of 32 years in April last year after a jury found him guilty of the shooting murder of Kadir Ors in September 2016.

Ms Marrogi was a well-known businesswoman in the community. She tragically died aged 30 in 2021 after being struck down with Covid.
Her business started innocuously as a fundraiser for children in the family’s Syrian village of origin but allegedly became a money laundering scheme for her family.

[glalt]

This looks a bit like vigilantes. Maybe the citizens are tired of the drug gangs and the police ignoring the problem.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Is your friend either of middle eastern descent, or a former bikie/associate, Uncle?

If you look up the names of the victims, they seem to fit almost exclusively into either one or both of the above cohorts.

Yes, his family originated in Turkish Cyprus, and were told to leave and they moved to Lebanon where his grandfather was the head of the Mafia. People within the Lebanese government warned the grandfather a few weeks before the government was going to move against the gangsters so they migrated to Sydney although the grandfather had connexions to the mob in Las Vegas, and could have moved there.

The grandfather gave my friend his Lebanese name: 'Hitman'.

[jackspratt]

This looks a bit like vigilantes. Maybe the citizens are tired of the drug gangs and the police ignoring the problem.

You got 1 out of 3, glalt.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

It seems that the Australian gangs are including body snatching in their arsenal.

Mafia rivals are suspected of desecrating the grave of a drug lord’s sister in an attempt to snatch her body.

The gang members thought to have forced open the coffin of Meshilin Marrogi are believed to have been trying to steal her remains to extract funds from the jailed Australian crime boss George Marrogi, 34, whose relatives are known as the Notorious Crime Family.

His sister died aged 30 after contracting Covid-19 in 2021 and was buried in Preston General Cemetery in Melbourne.

In the early hours of Sunday, the thieves forced open the crypt cover and removed her coffin from the mausoleum wall. They failed to take her body further because the lift was broken. Instead, they stole jewellery from her corpse.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/aust ... -skbzr386c

[Whistler]

The drug warriors in Australia have been dominated by Middle Eastern gangs, Bikie gangs with a large Islander membership, the Italian community used to dominate the marijuana trade. The importers have a large Asian contingent.

[Doodoo]

Cocaine wars in
New York,Vancouver, Oslo, Bangkok, Deli, Los Angeles, London, etc where else, everywhere

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Start a thread on one of those places, Doodoo.. Who knows, your thread might prove to be helpful and of interest. No-one if forcing you to read/comment on this one.

[Doodoo]

I did comment on this one.
What city in the world doesnt have problems

[Laan Yaa Mo]

I did comment on this one.
What city in the world doesnt have problems

Yeah, but it was not much help in understanding the problem, and how to solve it, in Sydney. You can start another thread to analyse and discuss your question. Anyway, up to you. On your way now.

[Doodoo]

The cocaine problem will never be fixed. Can you imagine the Generals etc down in South America or Afghanistan etc wanting to lose their helicopters, Suburbans, guns, girlfriends etc financed by Governments such as the US. If they fix it bye bye multiple millions of dollars

As for another thread I dont want another one so wont start one as you have instructed
Also I usually dont take instructions from others, the one reason is I am retired now.
The other thing is that I have never asked a question as you stated , best to bone up on your reading skills.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

I did comment on this one.
What city in the world doesnt have problems

Talking about refreshing one's reading skills, there's the question you posed.

Suggesting is different than instructing, which is why I wrote 'Up to you'.

Anyway, this case caught my attention because I have a friend from Sydney who knows some of the people involved in the gangs since he grew up with them. Is this thread of interest to anyone other than us, you can look to find out how many people have opened the thread. Please note that I wrote 'opened', not 'read'.

Also, you might want to note in my opening remarks that I did mention it is a difficult problem to solve in many parts of the world. Furthermore, the issue was deemed worthy enough of attention that it was reported in the Times (London).

[Doodoo]

The Times of London, sorry not on my reading list
Now if it were on the Bangkok Post or one of the attached https://www.refdesk.com/paper.html,
or maybe the Wingham Freepress or even the Farmers guardian I would have caught wind of it.
But, Cocaine is old news even since the Peruvian Civilization and it appears that no one of any significance are interested in solving the problem(s) with it

[Laan Yaa Mo]

The Times of London, sorry not on my reading list
Now if it were on the Bangkok Post or one of the attached https://www.refdesk.com/paper.html,
or maybe the Wingham Freepress or even the Farmers guardian I would have caught wind of it.
But, Cocaine is old news even since the Peruvian Civilization and it appears that no one of any significance are interested in solving the problem(s) with it

You may be correct, and probably are.

[marjamlew]

Decriminalise cocaine. Sell it at $100.00 a gram at government stores - currently $300 a gram from the gangs and dealers. Lots of tax money to be had and cuts the off the gangs at the knees.
Can't tell me that a gram of coke is any more dangerous that a bottle of vodka or whisky. It's a no brainer but no government in this country has the balls to implement a common sense policy.

[Whistler]

Decriminalise cocaine. Sell it at $100.00 a gram at government stores - currently $300 a gram from the gangs and dealers. Lots of tax money to be had and cuts the off the gangs at the knees.
Can't tell me that a gram of coke is any more dangerous that a bottle of vodka or whisky. It's a no brainer but no government in this country has the balls to implement a common sense policy.

This report seems to be a balanced view of alcohol and cocaine.

It clearly states cocaine is 3 times more dangerous than alcohol. Of course booze kills more people overall, since more people imbibe than snort.

https://www.theraleighhouse.com/addicti ... us-alcohol