RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: Funny: OZschwitz underworld is all in the family  Sat Jun 20, 2009 6:41 pm | |
| In the turf wars between the criminals of Sydney and Melbourne for the hearts and minds of the Australian people, the numbers may have favoured the latter, but there is a certain quality to Sydney's underworld feuds that Melbourne just can't equal.
Just because Aussie Rules scores can get into the hundreds, doesn't mean that rugby union or rugby league are lesser games. The Morans in Melbourne have made a bold bid for this year's Chopper Read Award - the Choppers - the Oscars of crime. Mother- and sister-in-law are both being held without bail in relation to the murder of "not-worth-tuppence" Moran.
Yet, while John Ibrahim is without stain (except in his hair), his brothers are as colourful and canny as anything Windy City has come up with. Fadi's idea of laying low was to drive a black Lamborghini. It takes a native cunning to drive in plain sight in such a car into your Castle Cove castle.
(What were the police thinking when they called their investigation into the Fadi ambush Strike Force Proudfoot, with the target in danger of losing a limb and his companion shot in the leg?)
But for true Sydney style, the Razzak-Darwiche family wars in south-west Sydney are my pick. They make the Morans of Melbourne look like the family in Packed To The Rafters.
In the 1990s members of the families divided south-west Sydney into personal fiefdoms for each with a black felt pen on the inside cover of a Gregory's Road Map.
The Razzaks had the suburbs to the left, the Darwiches the right. If a runner from one family entered the territory of the other, a quick, direct shot to the kneecap followed, while the compassionate shooter dialled triple-0 to ensure an ambulance came quickly. A limp was a permanent reminder to an errant drug runner.
Police field commanders from Bankstown to Mascot scratched their heads to work out how the junkies and druggies were able to know the phone numbers of the drug dealers and distributors associated with the clans even though they were changed every day to avoid interception and detection.
The best minds of the minds of the crime commission couldn't work it out. But the Razzaks and the Darwiches come from tribal cultures in Lebanon where your everyday life depended on using your wits.
What the police missed was a battered Holden Civic that would drive around Lakemba, Punchbowl and allied suburbs, up and down Wattle Street and Anzac Parade, with handwritten cardboard signs on the inside of the back and side windows reading "For Sale - Cheap, Registered, $2000.00, Ring 0404 . . . . . . ." The number changed daily to match a pre-paid phone. They had found a way to inform their customers more effectively than Facebook or Twitter.
At brief times, peace has reigned between the Razzaks and the Darwiches. In one instance, like Romeo and Juliet, love blossomed between two members of the rival families, and de facto family head Ali Abdul-Razzak married a flower of the Darwiche clan, Khadige. And it is not as if every clan member was living with guns and drugs.
But peace was always short-lived, as was the life of Ali Abdul-Razzak who was shot after leaving prayers at the Lakemba Mosque.
In a strange twist, Ali Abdul-Razzak was admired and liked by Eddie Darwiche, head of that family. After consulting the big book and seeking spiritual advice it was decided that although Ali Abdul-Razzak must die - a domestic violence order could not deliver the necessary retribution and an assault on a Darwiche is a slap in the face of all Darwiches - he was to be liquidated at a time in which he would most likely be in a state of grace, after prayers. He would immediately enter paradise.
This is not surprising. Sydney gunmen make hits with heart. On the other (fully armed) hand, Jason Moran and his mate Pasquale Barbaro were gunned down in Melbourne while watching their children play soccer. The children saw it all. Tuppence cashed in his chips while inside his favourite delicatessen.
Whereas in Emerald City, Abdul Darwiche confronted his killer inside Paradise Cuisine, a popular Turkish kebab shop, in Bass Hill in March this year. He naturally asked "Why now?" as if the statute of limitations on inter-family murders had run out. He then motioned the gunman to go outside, away from where his family and children were eating. The murderer politely obliged, accompanied Abdul Darwiche outside and killed him.
No such courtesy was shown to the staff and customers of Tuppence's favourite deli.
Crazy Khaled was chief enforcer for the Darwiches. He supervised younger members of the clan to carry out their tasks and when they sometimes hesitated, if ordered to carry out a kneecapping on a double-dealing dealer, he simply stated it was shoot or be shot. All complied.
War flared again after Crazy himself was shot at a halal butchers when there was supposed to be a truce. It was not kosher.
Eddie had found religion, grown a huge beard and was attending the Haj when the attack on Crazy went down - but he came back to hunt for his friend's assailants. He shaved his beard off.
The conflict came to a head at a safe house in Greenacre, stalked by the revenging Darwiche gang at midnight. Crazy usually drove the getaway car but his injuries were too severe on this occasion. The reserve driver had gout. Nevertheless, they pressed on.
Eddie had amassed an array of weapons of mass family destruction in the back of his Range Rover. Pistols, rifles, AK-47s and, most tempting of all, a pair of rocket launchers. What better to dispose of a safe house full of Razzaks?
However, someone in the gang with a flair for these things, pointed out that the house was made of fibro and the rocket would most likely go straight through and into the neighbours. They settled on using every other gun but the rocket launcher.
The house was riddled with gunfire and looked like Swiss cheese when the getaway car fled the crime scene. Ziad Razzak and Mervat Nemra died on the floor of lead poisoning. Collateral damage is not confined to Iraq.
Family feuds go back to the very first family. The Cains have been killing Abels since their original parents left the Garden of Eden. Of course, then, there was no one else to kill.
Modern civilisation gives the budding murderer plenty of choices but nothing seems to enrage more than the enemy within the family, the viper in the nest.
At the current rate the series of Underbelly will never catch up with real life unless they hook up the CCTV cameras trained on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney to direct television.
Only then could we have a true State of Origin play off with daily highlights, state-on- state, mate-on-mate, with the last gang standing the winner.
LNK |
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