by Yoni Bashan
Patton pressed his point to dump her from the program. What if, he said, a decision was made to shift the investigation in her direction? Surveillance could be compromised. ‘She might recognise our faces,’ he said.
McKay disagreed. He wanted to keep her there; it might raise suspicions if she was suddenly told not to come. He asked Patton how much was known about her. Patton said not much; she was a buyer on the periphery. Good, McKay said. He told Patton to use the opportunity; his detectives could take advantage of the chance to collect basic corroborating details: the car she drives, her phone number. Did he have solid confirmation that it was really her voice, or her text messages, getting picked up on the intercept? The answer was no: as unlikely as it was, someone could have plausibly registered a SIM card in her name, just like Bruce had done with his own phone.
The next morning, two of Patton’s detectives waited in the car park of the North Cronulla Surf Club. As Hage-Ali’s green BMW pulled into one of the vacant spaces, they noted down her licence plate. Once she was inside the surf club, business cards were exchanged. Her name and phone number matched the digits coming up on the intercept.
A few speakers preceded Hage-Ali, one of whom famously suggested that MEOCS officers, as a courtesy, remove their shoes before conducting search warrants. This prompted eye rolls from some in the audience; it was precisely the kind of impractical and dangerous advice that made officers skeptical of well-meaning cultural training days. There wasn’t a police officer on the planet who would take off their shoes before running into a house where the risks weren’t known.
When it was Hage-Ali’s turn to stand up in front of the officers, she spoke about the southwestern Sydney that she knew best, telling the officers about the good people in the community who wanted something done about crime, the youths who felt angry and isolated by racism, and the mistrust of officers which had led to a breakdown in communication. McKay, who was listening, thought she spoke well. Aside from the handful of people on Patton’s team, few people knew about her peripheral role in the Strike Force Kirban investigation.
After another month of listening to Bruce Fahda’s phone calls and making takeaway arrests, Patton’s team was ready to move on the Fahda syndicate. On 21 November the operational orders for several search warrants were drafted and included four targets: Mohamad ‘Bruce’ Fahda; his seventeen-year-old business partner; Khoder Katrib; and Iktimal Hage-Ali. She was to be arrested and questioned not for buying but on the suspicion of drug supply.
Hage-Ali was still asleep when Detective Sergeant Belinda Dyson knocked on the front door of her parents’ house at 7am on 22 November. Her father answered the door, greeting Dyson and two officers flanking her in the doorway. Iktimal’s mother and brother arrived as well to see what was going on. As they all spoke, Iktimal walked out of her room dressed in pyjamas.
Dyson asked her to step outside, but Hage-Ali refused. ‘What’s all this about?’ she asked.
‘Do you know Mohamad Fahda?’ asked Dyson.
‘Yeah,’ Hage-Ali said. ‘He’s a friend.’
‘Well, you have him to thank for this.’
Hage-Ali’s mother tried explaining to Dyson that whatever was happening must be a misunderstanding. They couldn’t possibly want to arrest her daughter. ‘Not Iktimal,’ she said. ‘She’s the good one.’
For Hage-Ali it had become obvious that this was over the cocaine she’d been buying, but even she had the presence of mind to remember some of the texts she’d sent asking for some free samples to help out her friends. ‘If you had his phone tapped, I can explain,’ she said. ‘The drugs were for me. I owed him money, so I told him they were for a friend.’
Inside the station, Hage-Ali was escorted past a grim procession of holding cells. She was petrified, uninitiated to the bleak, miserable world of custody at a busy, metropolitan police station.
Patton and Phillips waited for her in an interview room. It was a windowless pod with a table and some recording equipment. When she sat down, Phillips pressed a button to start recording.
‘Time commenced is 9:00am. Also present is Detective Sergeant Patton,’ he said. ‘Iktimal, do you agree there are no other persons in the room other than those I just introduced?’
‘Yeah,’ Hage-Ali replied.
She had already agreed to provide full co-operation, telling both detectives she would make a statement, provide an interview and, if necessary, give evidence against Mohamad ‘Bruce’ Fahda in court. Once they got through her basic personal details, Phillips informed her that she’d been arrested on suspicion of supplying cocaine.
‘I didn’t supply cocaine to anyone,’ she said. ‘The cocaine was for my own personal use. I never bought it for anyone, never gave it to anyone. It was solely for my purposes.’
‘All right,’ Phillips said.
Hage-Ali continued her explanation, telling both detectives that she constantly lied to Fahda – all of the cocaine that she told him would be bought for her friends was really for herself. There were no friends asking for samples of his product; it was just her way of getting free tasters. Apart from free cocaine, the other reason she had lied to Fahda, she said, was to cover up her use of the drug, particularly during Ramadan – she just didn’t want him to know she was using during the holy month.
Patton was intrigued. He’d been looking out for the telltale signs of a liar, watching out for inconsistencies, bad eye contact and claims of poor memory. Hage-Ali didn’t fit the profile. She never stumbled, she remained emphatic about her version of events, and she made full, uncomfortable admissions about everything else the investigation had captured about her cocaine use. He also knew that outside the text messages, he had no corroborating evidence. And apart from anything else, Patton believed her story.
It was Patton’s call on whether to lay charges or not. He was the officer in charge and had an opportunity to use his discretion. She was a drug user, not a supplier, he thought. But his view clashed with his superiors’.
Over the next two hours he fielded calls from both Mick Ryan and Ken McKay seeking updates on the arrests and charges being laid. Ryan applied no pressure and told Patton it was his call to make. But McKay was confused by his stance; so she hadn’t supplied cocaine, he said, we should still charge her with something. He wanted to insulate the police from a wrongful arrest or defamation suit. ‘Just charge her with use/possess,’ he said. The way he saw things, it was up to the courts to decide on a person’s innocence, not the police. Patton dug in his heels. He saw a morality issue. To the hierarchy, she was a name, but to him she was just another drug user, one who was prepared to give evidence in court against the main target of his investigation. On that basis alone, Patton was happy to let her walk free – you don’t charge rollovers on minor drug offences; it defeats the purpose of their co-operation.
She was let go within the hour without any charges hanging over her head. News of her arrest wasn’t made public. Patton told her there wouldn’t be any media release about what had happened, but advised her to resign from her position with the NSW Attorney-General’s Department and, painful as it might be, to pull out as a finalist for NSW Young Australian of the Year, which was being announced within the week. As Hage-Ali walked away she gave him an assurance she would think about it.
Even though McKay didn’t agree with Patton’s decision not to charge Hage-Ali, he supported him internally as the police hierarchy fired off lengthy memos seeking explanations for what had happened. For Peter Dein, the Operations Manager at the State Crime Command, the lack of charges meant that, legally, the NSW Police Force couldn’t inform Hage-Ali’s bosses about the arrest. It had been nearly a week and she was still working in her role with the NSW Attorney-General’s Department and, despite what she told Patton, appeared to be a sure thing to win the NSW Young Australian of the Year Award.
Dein had commissioned some legal advice about how to handle the situation. It suggested that if anyone tried to tell Hage-Ali’s boss about the arrest it could le
ave the NSW Police Force open to a compensation payout in the neighbourhood of $40,000.
McKay shielded Patton during these exchanges of legal letters, providing the cover fire he needed to keep working on the loose ends of his investigation. That was his command style: back your troops, even if you disagree with them sometimes. ‘It is my belief as an experienced illicit drug investigator,’ McKay wrote to Dein, ‘that it was an appropriate use of discretion.’
The following week, Hage-Ali was named NSW Young Australian of the Year, accepting her award from the state’s governor-general, Marie Bashir, at a formal ceremony. News about Hage-Ali’s arrest hadn’t broken in the media, but the prevailing view among MEOCS detectives was that she’d been wrong and audacious to accept the award. By contrast, Hage-Ali saw nothing wrong with accepting the accolade and remaining in contention for the national finals. In her mind she had given eight years of service to the community as a Muslim youth representative – why should that be voided based on her personal lifestyle choices?
A few days after receiving her award she was contacted by a journalist at Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. The journalist told her he’d received a tip-off about her involvement in a drug arrest. Hage-Ali calmly deflected the journalist’s questions, denying the allegation and putting it down to rumour mongering in her community.
‘I am a high-profile person,’ she said. ‘I have no idea why people would be saying this.’
Without her confirmation, the story fell over. But a week later, having somehow received new information, the newspaper ran a front-page story that triggered days of follow-up coverage and national debate. ‘PM’S ADVISER IN DRUG BUST’ ran the headline. Hage-Ali resigned from her job immediately and relinquished her title as NSW Young Australian of the Year. She left Australia that week, flying out to Dubai amid the storm of coverage and vowing to sue the NSW Police Force over her treatment. Three years later, after months of hearings in the District Court, a verdict was handed down in her favour in the case she’d brought against the authorities over wrongful arrest.
During those hearings, the judge found that Hage-Ali should not have been arrested in the first place. Legally and morally, Patton still felt he had done the right thing – he had had genuine suspicions that she might be supplying drugs, but had let her go almost immediately when he realised it was not the case. He’s since privately wondered whether or not he should have charged her with a ‘use/possess’ offence, per McKay’s instructions, which might have prevented the ugly lawsuit.
For the wrongful arrest, the judge awarded Hage-Ali a payout of $18,705. It was a vindication of sorts; the judge ruled the police had reasonable cause, but because her role was so minor she should have been issued with a summons. The decision was handed down in late 2009 and, by then, each of the Kirban targets had already been sentenced and released on parole. Mohamad ‘Bruce’ Fahda and Khoder Katrib, the syndicate’s runner, had done just under two years for drug supply while their business partner, the teenager, received a far lesser sentence because he was a juvenile at the time. All three men to this day remain firmly on the police radar.
CHAPTER SIX
MEOCS TAG: THE RISK
WETHERILL PARK, WEDNESDAY, 15 MARCH 2007
At the far end of an outdoor car park, at the back of an IGA supermarket, in a corner where nobody was watching, an undercover officer stood by the hood of his car steadying himself for a drop-off. For the last six months he’d been posing as a high-level drug dealer, worming his way into a ruthless syndicate starting at the very bottom. He’d started with a ring of street dealers and moved onto their bosses, infiltrated their suppliers, and then shook hands with the wholesalers – the men with links to the pill presses. And now he was here, the penthouse above the top floor, about to meet the ‘upline suppliers’, men who were both mysterious and rarely seen. In the boot of the car was $28,000 in crisp bills, neatly stacked in a bundle and tied with rubber bands, the money earmarked to purchase 2000 MDMA pills.
Cloaked in the background were a dozen sets of eyes, teams of police involved in the operation, watching or listening using hidden cameras and sensitive microphones. Each man had a role. A supervisor was wired directly into the undercover, his earpiece picking up every sound the officer made. Brian Jeffries, the primary eye, a MEOCS detective, sat in a surveillance vehicle controlling a camera. It had been planted in the car park that day and gave him a clean view of everything. Close by were tactical officers sitting in an armoured truck. Dressed in assault gear, they were waiting for their signal to move in case of an emergency. And in a covert sedan was Dave Adney, the operation’s commander. The big decisions – to wait, to move, to abort – were his to make. Next to him was Mark Spice, the officer in charge of the investigation, a suburban detective who had come to MEOCS after stumbling on a group of small-time dealers with big-time friends, the tail of a rattlesnake.
Adney’s command car sat near the car park on Rosetti Street where the undercover officer was waiting but he had no view of the scene itself. Both he and Spice relied on Jeffries, the primary eye, for their updates.
A few minutes past 2pm, Jeffries’s voice squawked over the radio. He’d picked up something on the screen in front of him.
‘Car arriving,’ he reported. Adney put the word out to everyone: look alive, people. Then he sat back and waited, taking in the radio silence and the fading afternoon light on Rosetti Street, a pleasant part of the world: the view in front of him included neat houses lined up on one side of the road, a shopping centre on the other, and a spacious reserve the size of a few football fields – all of it a world away from where this investigation first started.
It’s a good forty-minute drive from the car park on Rosetti Street to the Castle Hill Tavern, a bustling pub on the northwest of Sydney, the kind of place heaving with beer gardens, football players, and singles looking to pick up on a Friday night. It was also crawling with drug dealers from outside the area. Ecstasy was a favourite at the tavern, selling for about $25 a pill to each of the young buyers. Spice cottoned onto this and set up a drug operation using sniffer dogs and officers in uniform to needle the customers into giving up their dealers.
What followed were two dozen arrests – buyers and sellers – the majority of whom had no real value. They were the dregs, small-time peddlers with no one heavy in the trade behind them. But eventually Spice found two runners with potential, white kids from the suburbs, cleanskins with no criminal records. They said the Tavern was ‘theirs’ and gave an undercover officer a business card. Things moved quickly. Five days later, in the Tavern’s car park, the undercover met the suppliers and bought fifty pills. They were the next link in the chain. One was the son of a prison officer. The other, Alen Muschulu, had cousins on the MEOCS radar, organised crime identities working with the DLASTHR street gang. These were men of Assyrian heritage, migrants hailing from Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian and Turkish families. Through Muschulu, Spice saw his next move forming, a slipstream into the upline suppliers, the guys dealing in batches.
It was around this time, September 2006, that Dave Adney received a phone call from Spice’s commander offering to hand over the case to MEOCS. It had become too big, the commander said. This was no longer an investigation into a few pills being passed around a suburban pub. Spice had transcended a hierarchy – he’d thrown a grappling hook into the middle tiers of a syndicate and had another one ready to stab into the mountain. What he needed was a much bigger team behind him, experienced organised crime detectives who could handle the job full time, without the distraction of important but less complex local priorities.
Within days, Spice walked into the MEOCS TAG office and dumped the case files onto his new desk. By February his investigation – Strike Force Tapiola – using an unwitting Muschulu, had deployed more undercover officers and locked onto a new collection of targets, the chief distributors or ‘upline’, as police call it, all of whom had links to the DLASTHR street gang. There was Hormis Baytoon, one of the main men. He met
with undercover officers numerous times, selling them thousands of pills, with Superman and Mickey Mouse logos embossed on both sides. Circling Baytoon was a cohort: Hayati ‘Harry’ Cevik was a nominee for the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang; Amar Kettule was a suspect in a 2006 homicide; and Phelmon Shemoon appeared to be a shot-caller in their hierarchy, a man who Spice believed was the next link up in the chain.
They were a hot-headed crew, marauders who rampaged through the underworld and spawned their own offshoot investigations. They ripped off buyers and stood over rivals, bashing down doors and pointing guns in their faces. Spice’s team watched with growing concern; someone was going to get killed, they thought. The gang’s MO was to cut the power to a house and wait at the fuse box. In the most serious incident a man living at Toongabbie went to check why his lights weren’t working and found three men waiting for him around the side of his house. One had a shotgun. Another had a taser. They forced the homeowner inside and ransacked the property, demanding drugs and cash in front of his family, convinced he was a dealer with a hidden stash – that was what they’d been told, anyway.
The victim insisted it wasn’t true, but they didn’t believe him. He was tasered as a show of their will: it was a warning to show they meant business. When his denials persisted they pointed the shotgun at one of his children. One of the attackers checked the address a second time and discovered they were standing in the wrong house. At least half a dozen other similar home invasions were thought to be linked to the men.
There were other problems emerging. A recent batch of pills bought by Spice’s undercover had returned positive readings for the substance known as PMA, a volatile and deadly amphetamine that had recently killed young dance teacher Annabel Catt at the Good Vibrations music festival. Her death was hitting headlines as the lab tests came back.
Adney and Spice discussed their options. Those pills needed to be taken out of circulation before more users were killed. The decision they agreed upon was to keep buying the tablets off Baytoon and his distributors to try to identify the manufacturer – the engineer with a hand on the pill press.