R v Tarek Zahed

R v Tarek Zahed - [2024] NSWSC 231 - NSWSC 2024 case summary — Zoe

[3]

Objective features

The objective features of the offending can be shortly stated, based upon some agreed facts that were placed before me.
Between about 11:30 PM on 10 December 2014, and a little after midnight later that evening, the deceased was detained, restrained to the ankles and wrists, and bashed within the motor vehicle in question, which he owned. He was also shot in the leg at close range with a firearm.
At about 12.10 that morning, staff from a suburban Sydney hospital located the deceased, unconscious in a nearby street. Present also was the brother of the offender, Mr Abdul Zahed. A motor vehicle was seen to depart. The deceased was badly injured, including to his upper right thigh from the gunshot wound, and had no pulse. Tragically, life was pronounced extinct at 12:47 AM. A victim impact statement provided to me speaks eloquently of the suffering that loss has brought to many; my approach to that statement was made clear and agreed to in the proceedings on sentence.
Police attended, spoke to the brother of the offender, and charged him with a relatively minor public justice offence.
One day later, on 12 December 2014, the offender and a person to be known as Male A attended the home of a relative of the offender. They took possession of the vehicle in question, and drove it to the home of male A. Much blood had been spilt on various parts of the interior of the car. The offender told the other man to clean it, and both of them did so. The offender also told the other man to dispose permanently of the car, through a friend who operated a wrecking yard. His motivation for taking these steps was a desire to protect his brother, an emotion that was perhaps understandable but hardly to be praised, and one that calls for a measure of general deterrence in any event.
Male A attempted to arrange that, but the instructions of the offender were botched. The alternative adopted was that Male A paid a significant sum of money to a co-offender, Mr Triantafilos Vlangos, to dispose of the vehicle by way of an explosion. Several days later, Mr Vlangos drove the vehicle to another suburb, where he tried and failed to destroy it by fire with an accelerant. In fact, the fire was able to be put out, the vehicle was identified as having belonged to the deceased, and police were able to examine it. Having said that, that examination was surely rendered less effective because of what had twice been done to the vehicle.
In the event, the person or persons who committed the homicide of the deceased have never been brought to justice. It is impossible to say that "but for" the actions undertaken and directed by the offender that the killer or killers would have been detected, convicted, and punished. Even so, as I have said, the actions and orders of the offender surely played some role in making the police investigation more difficult; so much is conceded by his plea of guilty in any event.

[7]

Cautious approach; life of offender

Speaking more generally about subjective matters, I have approached them with significant caution. That is not only because, as I have said, I have heard no oral evidence from the offender, or anyone else connected to him. It is also because, in the relatively recent past, the offender has been convicted of public justice offences, whereby he sought to deceive a court. Even allowing for that caution, however, I am satisfied on balance of the following.
The offender was born in mid-1980, and is therefore in his early 40s. At the time of the offence under discussion, he was 34 years of age. There is no suggestion that his upbringing as a child was anything other than a happy one. Even so, he experienced learning and behavioural difficulties at school, and was placed in special education classes. Those difficulties culminated in him being expelled in year 7. I accept that, then and now, he operates at a reasonably low level intellectually; having said that, based upon later events in his life, I also think that he is a person capable of considerable forethought and cunning.
From the age of 13 years, the offender quickly slipped into the abuse of cannabis, alcohol, and ecstasy, although his position is that, later in life, he brought his substance abuse under control.
The offender has enjoyed two close romantic relationships. The first commenced in 2007, though subsequently ended. One child, a daughter now aged 16 years, was born to that relationship. In 2015, the offender learned that he had another child; a daughter he had fathered at 14 years of age.
The offender also began his relationship with his current wife in 2015. They were married in an Islamic ceremony and have two children together, eight and six years of age. In 2021, the family moved to Melbourne. Since the offender's arrest in 2022, his wife has been raising the children as a single parent, away from their family support in Sydney. I accept that she has been struggling to cope, and has since been diagnosed with chronically high-level anxiety and low-grade depression. The eldest child is also said to be suffering from severe separation anxiety, as a result of his father's incarceration. I accept that as well.

[8]

Criminal record and role within the Comancheros

Returning to the early life of the offender, he commenced at that time to intersect with the criminal justice system, by way of driving and property offences. By the time he was 15 in 1995, he was interacting violently with police, and was the subject of a short control order. At the age of 20, he was convicted of two counts of maliciously causing a dog to inflict actual bodily harm, and sentenced to periodic detention. The offender breached that order, and was imprisoned full-time.
A few years later, in early 2004, he was convicted of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm, and recieved a head sentence of 5 years with a non-parole period of 3 years. A few years after that, in 2009, he discharged a firearm with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. The agreed facts of that matter were placed before me; it suffices to say that, in an act of organised violence, the victim was shot at close range by the offender, four projectiles being discharged and two finding their mark, including one penetrating the right ear of the victim. As part of the same incident, the offender had encouraged a reckless wounding with words of great brutality.
When this offence of hindering an investigation was committed, the offender was on parole for that shooting, he having been released as recently as October 2014, two months beforehand. That constitutes an obviously serious aggravating feature that requires reflection in my sentence.
Later, on a number of occasions over a period of some years between 2017 and 2020, as I have said the offender committed a number of public justice offences, including by way of attempting to mislead a criminal court. He also committed an offence to do with the proceeds of crime. The result of all that was a short period of imprisonment, along with a Community Corrections Order (CCO).
In short, the offender must be approached as a person who has intersected with the criminal justice system for a lengthy period, in various ways, often seriously, and in particular by way of grave violence. To adopt the words of his senior counsel, his record is "serious and bad". Obviously, all of that disentitles him to leniency in this matter, and plays a role in my reflection on his prospects of rehabilitation.
Another important aspect of the life of the offender is as follows.
Whilst on parole for the shooting offence, he became a member of a well-known motorcycle gang, and quickly rose through its ranks to become its national sergeant-at-arms. That is clearly a position of authority, and not one that a thoughtless, guileless person could attain. It also surely carries with it a threat, at the least, of the use of force in the enforcement of the rules of that group. Again, I regard that role of the offender in the past as a negative one, in a number of ways.
Two significant mitigating features are, however, as follows.

At a glance

Court

Decision date

Before

Source

Judgment (16 paragraphs)

Parties

Cited By (2)