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Exiled underworld kingpin Kazem “Kaz” Hamad ordered the firebombing of the Adass Israel synagogue as payback to Iran for allowing his gang to operate an international drug and cigarette-trafficking network in areas under its control.
Intelligence obtained by this masthead shows one of Australia’s most dangerous criminals executed the terror attack on the Jewish place of worship in Melbourne in December 2024 as a quid pro quo for the continuing protection of the Iranian government and its network of militias in the Middle East.
Hamad and his cousin and second-in-command, Ahmed Al Hamza, have been running a transnational crime syndicate from Iraq and Iran that has come to dominate the underworld in Australia through control of the multibillion-dollar illicit tobacco market and wholesale drug trafficking.
The syndicate, known as the 313, has been linked to more than 200 fire bombings as part of a nationwide illicit tobacco smuggling, distribution and extortion network. The gang is also suspected of involvement in scores of shootings and numerous murders, which has been orchestrated from overseas with little consequences using encryption technology.
The creation and protection of that power base in the Middle East was what led Hamad to orchestrate the destruction of the Adass Israel synagogue in the Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea, according to three law enforcement and underworld sources who cannot be identified publicly.
In the early hours of December 6, 2024, three masked men smashed open the front door of the synagogue with an axe, doused the building in petrol and set it on fire. The synagogue was destroyed.
The incident was declared a terror attack, and Australian intelligence services traced ultimate responsibility to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The attack occurred at a time of heightened social tension and rising antisemitism in Australia under the backdrop of Israel’s deadly bombardment of Gaza. The war began when Hamas, a listed terrorist organisation backed by Iran, attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has a well-documented history of using criminal gangs as proxies to launch terror attacks on enemies overseas, including targeting Jewish communities.
This masthead can also reveal that police intelligence and court records have linked the third Melbourne man charged over his participation in the firebombing to Hamad’s crime syndicate. The 20-year-old is a known foot soldier for at least two of Hamad’s Melbourne-based crews involved in extorting the tobacco market and drug trafficking.
New details about the Hamad-Iran connection have emerged as ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess became the second major federal law enforcement or national security officer to pin the attack on the synagogue on Hamad, although he did not mention him by name due to “ongoing investigations”.
“Tonight, I can also confirm that a former Australian resident living in Iraq directed the attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne,” Burgess said during his annual threat assessment speech last week.
“Iran recruited him through a complex web of Iraqi-based militia groups.
“Valuing his high wealth and criminal connections, the IRGC protected him and supported his illegal enterprises.”
Command-and-control, Baghdad and Tehran
Following Hamad’s release from prison in Victoria and deportation to Iraq in July 2023, the rising gangland boss set up a decentralised command network for his gang spread across at least two Middle Eastern countries which have no extradition treaties with Australia, and a history of bad blood.
Hamad was based in Baghdad, Iraq, while Al Hamza set up in Iran’s capital, Tehran. The duo would cross back and forth between countries regularly for in-person meetings and holidays.
The two-state structure was designed to limit exposure to law enforcement and threats from any potential criminal rivals, who were considered unlikely to be able to strike at both simultaneously.
Hamad has extensive family connections inside the Shia-dominated Iraqi government, military and militias.
Both Hamad and Al Hamza are Iraqi-born Shia Muslims who immigrated to Australia as refugees as children with their families.
Neither Hamad nor Al Hamza are known to be particularly religious, but the Shia “connection” has helped both thrive in Shia-dominated Iraq and the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran.
Hamad went so far as to allow his soldiers to adopt Muslim religious imagery in the naming of the gang, 313 – a number referenced in and significant to Sunni and Shiite theology. There were 313 men who fought alongside the Prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Badr in 624AD, and this same number of soldiers – according to Shiite belief – will wage war again alongside the 12th Shiite Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, in an apocalyptic battle before the Day of Judgment.
The 42-year-old Hamad, until his arrest by Iraqi authorities earlier this year, had been living in a fortified compound in a wealthy suburb of Baghdad. His personal security guards were drawn from local armed forces and paid extremely well by Iraqi standards.
“Iraq is all about tribes. He’s got a cousin in the militia party. His uncle is in the military. He’s got a very big family,” an underworld source said.
Shia militias occupy a powerful position in Iraq, which is riven by corruption and strongly influenced by Iran as the region’s dominant Shia powerhouse.
The kingpin also boosted his local support among the government and militias by funding charities that pay for housing and food for the poor in and around Baghdad, including regular shipments of toys and school supplies.
Al Hamza had been based in the United Arab Emirates after fleeing Australia and renouncing his citizenship in 2022 following investigations into the attempted murder of Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim and major drug-trafficking investigations over a total of more than one tonne of meth and cocaine. No charges have ever been laid for those crimes.
When he’d been implicated in a further multi-tonne drug importation, Al Hamza left the UAE for the safety of Iran.
“Iran was not going to extradite him to Australia. They’ve been fighting the West their whole lives. If Iran labels you a friend, then you’re with them,” the source said.
The de facto proposition to authorities in both countries was that Hamad and Al Hamza wouldn’t “shit where they eat” – crimes could be planned from the safety of either jurisdiction, but there was to be no criminal activity in the countries themselves.
The web of connections had kept both Hamad and Al Hamza secure – until the Adass Israel firebombing.
The act that changed everything
Hamad and Al Hamza’s power base in unfriendly countries overseas had shielded them from any real consequences for the campaign of violence they unleashed in Australia from 2023 to 2025.
By the end of that year, Hamad’s 313 was operating in five states and one territory, and could access a seemingly bottomless supply of soldiers and contractors-for-hire for extortions, arsons, shootings and murders.
The duo had already topped Australia’s list of “priority” organised crime targets, but there has long been reluctance to share intelligence or co-operate with foreign governments in countries that have the death penalty.
Both men were also subject to Interpol blue notices – which are issued to try to track and uncover information on international criminals – that “weren’t even tickling their toes” when it came to stopping their activities, according to an underworld source.
But behind the scenes, the discovery the attack on the synagogue used the same methods as the tobacco war and other underworld violence – including a common vehicle – and then the connections between Hamad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps shifted law enforcement’s approach to tackling the gang.
In August, the Albanese government and ASIO declared that Iran was ultimately behind the Adass Israel attack – as well as a firebombing of a Jewish restaurant in Sydney – which led to the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was also listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the government.
In October, Hamad was publicly declared a national security threat by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett over his suspected involvement in the terror attack and nationwide crime empire.
The AFP had begun sending officers to Iraq and sharing an intelligence dossier suggesting Hamad had been trafficking drugs inside Iraq as well.
In mid-January, Iraqi judicial authorities arrested Hamad, and he has since disappeared into a “secret” detainment facility somewhere in the country. His current status is unknown.
“Iraqi officials have made an independent decision to arrest this alleged offender after launching their own criminal investigation,” Barrett said at the time.
Al Hamza had been detained several months before in Qatar in circumstances that remain unclear.
In his ASIO threat assessment speech last week, Burgess hinted at the effect that fallout from the Adass Israel synagogue attack had on Hamad’s seeming invulnerability and relationship with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“That changed dramatically after ASIO publicly named Iran’s involvement in the antisemitic arsons. This person’s Iranian backers lost their enthusiasm, and after further pressure from Australian and local law enforcement, they threw him in prison,” Burgess said.
“I cannot name (them) tonight to protect ongoing investigations and related prosecutions, but I want them to understand this: we know who you are, we know what you’ve done, and we know who you work for.”
The AFP, which helped organise Hamad’s arrest, declined to comment.
It remains unclear whether Hamad received any kind of payment for the attack.
Meanwhile, a third person was arrested and charged over the Adass Israel firebombing in June 2024.
The previous two accused appeared to be low-level street thugs hired to simply do a job.
But police intelligence tendered in multiple criminal proceedings suggest the latest arrest, a 20-year-old who is not being named for legal reasons, is a foot soldier with connections to at least two different Hamad crews engaging in tobacco-related extortions and attacks, and drug trafficking.
None of the three have been charged with terrorism-related offences.
Professor Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore, said the threat posed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps acting through crime gangs “is very much alive”.
“There is a nexus between crime and terrorism, and one of the clearest case studies of this is Australia with the firebombing of the restaurant in Sydney and the synagogue in Melbourne where Iranian intelligence services worked through the criminal entity backed by Kazem Hamad,” he said.
“They had a number of other targets, but these were the first two. Had Australia not investigated these two incidents thoroughly and meticulously, these attacks would have continued.”
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