Sydney detectives are struggling to contain the city’s escalating gang war and are facing a “wall of silence” despite two people dying in separate shootings over the past five days.
The recent spate of shootings started a month ago when the prominent underworld figure Alen Moradian was shot dead in broad daylight at Bondi Junction.
Taskforce Magnus has been established to investigate the crimes, with five people being shot as part of targeted and possibly linked hits across the city since Sunday.
The taskforce of 70 detectives and 30 plain-clothed officers will investigate links between the shootings and a string of other serious crimes including kidnappings believed to relate to drug supply.
The New South Wales police deputy commissioner David Hudson said all efforts were being made to resolve the “current conflict” but the crimes were particularly challenging to investigate.
“We hit a wall of silence,” he 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.”
It is hoped the taskforce would allow detectives to better understand the motives and workings of the gangs that control Sydney’s cocaine and methamphetamine supplies.
Hudson said he felt “sorry for individuals who live in certain parts” of western Sydney where most of the crimes had occurred.
“There are violent crimes … there are kidnappings that we’re currently looking at as well and other acts of violence,” he said.
Five people have been shot in Sydney over the past five days, including a man in his 20s who was gunned down and killed early Thursday morning, and Ahmad Al-Azzam who was shot in his car on Sunday before dying in hospital on Thursday.
Police said the man shot in Canterbury early on Thursday was believed to be speaking with two others in a car before being killed. Officers have since found two burnt-out cars they believe were used by the gunmen.
He was killed just a day after the high-profile criminal lawyer Mahmoud Abbas was gunned down and seriously injured in his driveway in Greenacre on Wednesday morning. There is no suggestion Abbas was involved in any criminal activity.
Abbas, 31, has undergone emergency surgery and has been able to speak with detectives.
The police commissioner, Karen Webb, said the recent shootings were “brazen” but she was confident her investigators would bring the situation under control.
“This sickens me like it sickens everyone else in this state and we need action,” she said. “It’s time to pool our resources and work through all of them collectively. The intelligence, the linkages, the patterns, all of those things need to be worked on.”
She said the crimes were a “sad indictment” on Sydney.
The police minister, Yasmin Catley, said she would listen to police and advocate for any resources or law reforms they needed to catch the “crooks”.
Despite reports the violence could be linked to internal conflict within the Comanchero outlaw bikie gang, Hudson said he did not believe the imprisonment of alleged senior figures Mick Murray and Mark Buddle since April last year had created a leadership vacuum that contributed to the shootings.
Moradian was considered an associate of the gang.
At least two alleged senior Comanchero figures subject to serious crime prevention orders had been banned from approaching, contacting, speaking to, or associating directly or indirectly with Moradian, along with dozens of other people, according to copies of their orders.
Other people the senior Comancheros were banned from associating with were later seen at Moradian’s funeral.
Ahmed Dib, a lawyer who has represented members of the Hamzy and Alameddine families accused of involvement in organised crime, said the current wave of shootings was “out of control”.
He said he had been particularly troubled by a photo which showed two schoolboys walking past the bloodied body of the recent victim who was gunned down in Canterbury.
“That photo broke my heart, two kids walking to school, that could scar them for life,” Dib said. “I would be mortified if that was my young boy seeing a body laying there.”
Dib said he had also been horrified by the shooting of fellow lawyer Abbas.
“He’s a young, hard-working solicitor, who has a team he’s responsible for. But also he’s a loving father with a young family.
“My main concern was for his safety [and] any lawyers, whether they like him, don’t like him, would have been concerned for his safety.”
