Hunted: Inside the Search for NSW’s 9 Most Wanted

Hunted: Inside the Search for NSW’s 9 Most Wanted

In June 2026, the New South Wales Police State Crime Command took a step that is rarely seen in Australian law enforcement.

They went public, releasing the names and faces of nine men they considered the state’s most wanted, all of them believed to be living offshore, and all of them connected to a wave of violence that has been tearing through Western Sydney for the better part of 3 years, more than 120 shootings, 19 killings, 40 kidnappings.

These are not abstract statistics.

They represent a city under siege from men who, in many cases, are directing carnage from thousands of kilometers away, hiding behind the laws of countries Australia has limited reach into.

This is the story of those nine men, who they are, what they are accused of, and why New South Wales Police believe that bringing them back to Australia is the key to stopping the bloodshed.

At the top of the list is a name that has haunted Sydney law enforcement for years, and has made regular appearances on this channel, Rafat Alameddine, the alleged boss of the Alameddine organized crime network, one of the most powerful and most feared criminal organizations in the city’s history.

Alameddine has been overseas since late 2022, when he was found not guilty of several matters in the New South Wales District Court, and promptly left Australia.

He is believed to have been living in Lebanon ever since, and photographs have circulated of him there alongside associates and family members.

His return to Lebanese soil appears to have done nothing to diminish his alleged influence back home.

New South Wales Police believe he has continued to direct criminal operations from abroad, ordering violence, coordinating drug supply, and allegedly continuing to wage a brutal gang war against rival factions that now includes rival Coconut Cartel.

The warrants outstanding for Alameddine’s arrest are serious.

He is wanted for alleged murders, conspiracy to murder, including an alleged plot to kill a member of the rival Hamze crime faction, drug supply, directing a criminal group, and contravening a serious crime prevention order.

Among the most significant allegations is his alleged role in the conspiracy that led to the deaths of Salim Hamze and his father, Toufic, at Guildford in 2021.

Toufic Hamze was an innocent man.

He was killed alongside his son in what police say was a targeted underworld hit.

State Crime Commander, Assistant Commissioner Scott Cook, was blunt in his message to Alameddine and the others on the list.

We are releasing the names and faces of these individuals to assist our inquiries.

Information about their movements or current location may be critical to progressing these investigations.

Beside Rafat Alameddine, and rarely far from him in either life or police intelligence, is John Ray Bassari, a 35-year-old described as one of Alameddine’s most trusted lieutenants.

Bassari’s association with the Alameddine network is well documented.

In February 2021, he was captured on airport CCTV cameras at Ballina Airport brawling with members of the rival Hamze gang near the Virgin Australia luggage carousel.

It was a brazen act of public violence, and it earned him a 12-month jail sentence for affray.

Though he was released on bail while appealing the sentence, that same investigation revealed more.

Surveillance recordings captured Bassari discussing drug supply and criminal conduct with other Alameddine associates, including high-ranking gang member Masood Zakaria.

In those recordings, Bassari can be heard reading out a message circulating in criminal circles, an offer of $100,000 to whoever could shoot or deliver a rival gang member.

Police also found a $21,000 Rolex watch and over $6,000 in cash at his home, which he subsequently admitted were proceeds of crime.

Like Alameddine, Bassari left Australia in 2022 and is believed to be in Lebanon.

Photographs have shown the two men together there.

Strike Force Neenam, launched in November 2019 to investigate the Alameddine network and its suspected activities across Sydney, ultimately obtained arrest warrants for both men.

Bassari now faces charges including murder, conspiracy to murder, again linked to the alleged plot against Ibrahim Hamze, drug supply, and directing a criminal group.

Of all the men on this list, perhaps none encapsulates the tragedy and violence of Sydney’s current underworld as starkly as Anthony Pele.

He is 25 years old and in the space of just a few years, he has allegedly gone from a promising junior rugby league footballer to one of the most wanted men in the country.

Pele grew up in Western Sydney and showed real footballing talent.

He played alongside future NRL professionals in the Sydney Roosters junior sides and later transferred to Canterbury-Bankstown.

When the pandemic canceled the 2020 season, his pathway to professional football collapsed almost overnight.

Around that time, he began associating with a Western Sydney gang called ROC, ride or collide, a phrase he would later have tattooed on his stomach.

He made brief returns to football in 2021, but by round four of that season, he had played his last game.

A senior New South Wales police officer who investigated Pele was direct about what happened next.

“Footy was his only pathway and when that was taken away, he was lost.

” Over the following two years, investigators say Pele became entrenched in Sydney’s underworld, building a reputation as a muscle-for-hire figure.

He eventually fell in with the Haouchar crime syndicate, and on the night of July the 23rd, 2023, everything changed.

Providing security for a Haouchar associate in Greenacre, Pele allegedly noticed a car idling outside a property.

Believing the occupants to be rivals from the Comanchero MC, with whom the Haouchars were at war, he allegedly approached the vehicle and opened fire, killing 22-year-old Ahmad Al Azzam and wounding two others.

Al Azzam was innocent.

So were the other two victims.

It was a catastrophic case of mistaken identity, and police had already been listening.

A covert recording captured Pele allegedly saying in the aftermath, “I acted on my own.

This had nothing to do with you.

” Eight days later, Pele boarded a one-way flight from Sydney to Dubai.

He has not returned.

His absence from Australia has not meant an absence from crime.

Court documents linked him to an alleged plot to steal close to a billion dollars worth of cocaine from a unit block in Ryde, and a separate alleged conspiracy to murder members of the Sydney rap group OneFour.

Both plots were allegedly foiled while Pele was overseas.

By 2025, police believe he had founded the Coconut Cartel alongside two other young men from Sydney, Lorenzo Lamalou and Izaiah Utia, a gang that announced itself with a series of firebombings targeting Alameddine homes and properties across southwest Sydney, igniting the tit-for-tat war that continues today.

Throughout all of this, Pele has been running a public Instagram account, taunting rivals, posting photographs of a globe-trotting lifestyle, and claiming locations from Samoa to Mexico to Albania.

He describes himself in his bio as a modern-day Sun Tzu, a reference to the author of The Art of War.

New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson called him a coward.

“They can be a hero with a gun in their hand, and you know, a faceless person, but once the pressure comes on, they run.

” Hudson said.

Pele is currently wanted for murder, conspiracy to murder, a public place shooting, drug supply, and participation in a criminal group.

Rabie Baltaqi sits at the intersection of several of the most significant cases in this investigation.

He is wanted for murder, drug supply, and dealing with proceeds of crime.

His most prominent alleged crime is his role in organizing the 2022 shooting murder of Lone Wolf bikie Yusuf Nazlioglu.

Nazlioglu was gunned down in the underground car park of his apartment building in Rhodes, ambushed by two men who waited for him and his wife to return home before one of them ran out and shot him eight times, including twice in the head.

He died in hospital.

Two men were subsequently convicted for the murder, Abdul Rahman Attaie and Muhammad Hosni Khaled.

Justice Deborah Sweeney found that Attaie had coolly planned and carried out the murder under the direction of Baltaqi, acting out of loyalty and financial reward.

“To kill a man over two cars is conduct which the community would rightly find shocking.

” the judge wrote.

Attaie received a maximum 34-year sentence.

Khaled received 24 years.

Baltaqi, the man the court heard was the ringleader, had already fled Australia and remains at large.

Of all the men on this list, Hussein Jouhaar carries perhaps the most haunting case attached to his name.

He is 38 years old, and police have been searching for him for nearly two decades.

In 2008, a man named Chen Liu was found on the banks of the Georges River.

He had 30 nails driven into his skull.

The case was so horrific that police later released an x-ray of Lou’s head to demonstrate the extreme nature of the crime.

Jouha is wanted in connection with that murder, an act of violence so deliberate and so methodical in its brutality that it remains one of the most disturbing cases in New South Wales’ recent criminal history.

He remains at large, believed to be offshore.

Maha Al Abed has been wanted since 2017 when Jimmy Al Alyan was allegedly murdered at his unit in Villawood.

Al Abed has been the subject of a warrant ever since, and police now believe he has long since left the country.

The specifics of the case remain subject to ongoing investigation, but his name has sat on the books for nearly a decade while authorities have pursued avenues to bring him back.

Hussein Zayoun is wanted in connection with the alleged murder of Ahmed Konjiem at Potts [music] Point in 2012.

The warrant for his arrest has been outstanding for over a decade, making him one of the longest-running fugitives on the current list.

The final two men on the list differ from the others in that their outstanding warrants are not directly tied to a killing, but their alleged role in Sydney’s drug economy is police say every bit as significant.

Daniel Toutounji has been overseas since 2018, and police believe he has spent much of that time in Eastern Europe, including Albania.

Zoran Kisa Karanen is also believed to be offshore.

Both men are alleged to have links to the Comanchero bikie gang.

Both are wanted on warrants for drug supply, directing a criminal group, and dealing with proceeds of crime.

They represent the financial engine alleged to underpin organized crime in New South Wales, the logistics men who keep the supply chains running while gang soldiers fight the wars on the streets back home.

What binds these nine men together is not just the warrants.

It is a failure of borders, an exploitation of the gap between Australian law and the practical limits of international enforcement.

New South Wales police have been frank about this.

The mutual legal assistance processes needed to secure extraditions are slow, complex, and dependent on the cooperation of foreign governments, some of which are more willing than others to assist.

But, the decision to go public, to name these men, show their faces, and appeal directly to the community for information is itself a message.

Police Minister Yasmin Catley framed it plainly.

New South Wales police are naming them because the message is simple.

You can run, but you will be hunted down by our cops.

For the families of Ahmad Al-Zahab, Chem Lu, Youssef Nazlioglu, Toufik Hamze, and the others whose deaths are alleged to connect to the men on this list, the waiting continues.

For New South Wales police, the hunt does too.

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