(AKI) - Australian police claim to have uncovered a 4.5 million dollar drug ring allegedly run from a maximum security prison cell by a convicted murderer via his cell phone.
The drug ring is allegedly led by Bassam Hamzy, the ringleader of the so-called "Super-Max jihadists".
He is suing the state of New South Wales for keeping him in segregation in Lithgow prison, 150 kilometres west of Sydney, after an alleged attempt to break out of another top-security jail in the regional city of Goulburn. Hamzy is alleged to have made 19,000 calls in six weeks, an average of 460 a day. The 29-year-old convicted killer, will be brought out of the state's top-security jail within the next 48 hours to face 15 fresh criminal charges.
He has not been outside a prison cell for almost a decade after the 1998 shooting murder outside the Mr Goodbar nightclub in the heart of Sydney. Hamzy, who fled to Lebanon, the United States, Belize and Colombia after killing Kris Toumazis and wounding another man, was recaptured and sentenced to spend 21 years in jail.
On Thursday, his father Khaled Hamzy, his brother Ghassan Amoun, and his cousin Khaled Hamzy Jnr. were among the associates arrested in a major police operation across Sydney, the capital city of New South Wales, and the neighbouring state of Victoria. Two others, Mohammad Abbas and Thomas Miholic were also arrested in police raids.
It is alleged the group shipped about 162,000 dollars worth of drugs from Sydney to Melbourne each week. |