Melbourne is being terrorised by an Iraqi-led gang known as The Cartel due to their moral opposition to the city’s nightlife, an underworld reporter has revealed.
The shadowy foreign-based syndicate has carried out a campaign of more than 30 firebombings on nightclubs, bars, restaurants, strip clubs and brothels in recent months, along with shootings, home invasions, kidnappings and stabbings, resulting in a massive police operation that is yet to stop the chaos.
Victoria Police are yet to publicly name the group responsible, but independent journalist Ryan Naumenko of Outlaw Media and the Herald Sun both reported on Monday that attacks were being conducted by a gang called The Cartel, which is linked to jailed tobacco war kingpin Kazem “Kaz” Hamad.
Mr Naumenko, who interviewed Hamad before his arrest in Iraq, said high-level sources within the syndicate had told him the campaign of terror was not a “protection racket” or related to illegal alcohol sales.
“The group known as The Cartel operates with an unyielding moral and ideological framework that outright rejects the entire after-dark economy,” he wrote in an article on Substack.
“Their explicit demand, delivered directly to venue owners and operators in multiple conversations with sources close to the top, is simple and uncompromising: ‘This isn’t about money, or illegal booze. If they want to keep this kind of thing happening in Australia they can pay us or burn’.
“The Iraqi-led Cartel does not view nightclubs, bars, brothels or strip venues as legitimate businesses to be shaken down for cash. They see them as embodiments of moral decay and unacceptable Western decadence – dens of debauchery, open drug markets, rampant alcohol abuse and behaviour by Australian women in these spaces that they regard as utterly intolerable.”
Mr Naumenko said he had personally spoken to a syndicate member dubbed The Ghost, and wrote on his popular Instagram account that “nothing short of military action will even slightly deter those heading the campaign”.
The Ghost is believed to be living in a bunker two hours south of Baghdad after fleeing Melbourne, where he was once one of Hamad’s top lieutenants, the Herald Sun reported.
Hamad, who reportedly made $1 billion in two years selling illegal cigarettes and vapes during Melbourne’s tobacco wars, where hundreds of stores were firebombed, was arrested in Iraq in January.
Victoria Police have so far arrested 42 people over a series of alleged incidents related to the anti-nightlife campaign, mainly teenagers who are being paid small amounts to carry out the firebombings.
Header image: Left, the SOHO nightclub in Melbourne being firebombed (Instagram). Right, Kazem Hamad (AFP).
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