According to the indictment, the attack was planned weeks before Radmanovic’s wife said the couple made a spontaneous decision in May to visit her sister and Ghanim in Bali.
Radmanovic may not have been the intended target, although an autopsy report found that he suffered more than one fatal shot in the attack, with bullets puncturing his heart and stomach.
Sanar Ghanim (inset) after the shooting and his partner’s hair salon in South Yarra, which was firebombed a month later as he returned to Melbourne.Credit: Monique Westermann / Instagram / Nine
Police allege that an unnamed Australian ordered Jenson to rent a villa in Bali from mid-April until the morning after the ambush in June, paying almost $3,000 in cash. Jenson then allegedly left the keys with someone in Thailand, before returning to Australia.
But two weeks before the attack, Jenson arrived in Bali again. As This header was revealed in JuneHe appeared to stake out the area near the crime scene before picking up Coskun and Tupou a few days before the shooting.
Charging
Jenson’s lawyers previously told reporters the Sydney plumber had been co-operating with police and thought he was helping a “mystery friend” when he arranged such things in exchange for a free trip to Bali, not realizing an alleged murder would occur.
In Australia, underworld sources say the ambush is linked to a debt running into millions of dollars. Some believe it was a warning to Ghanim, whose partner’s business has been bombed in Melbourne since his return from Bali.
Paea I Middlemore Tupou (left) and Mevlut Coskun (center) appear in court Thursday for the shooting of Zivan “Stipe” Radmanovic and Sanar Ghanim.Credit: amilia rosa
Ghanim shares a son with the stepdaughter of slain gangster boss Carl Williams and previously served time in Australia for drugs and weapons offences.
Charging
He had been living in Bali at least since last year when he set up the villa complex where the group was attacked.
Taken out of court masked and handcuffed on Thursday, one of the accused Australians told a journalist they had no intention of killing Ghanim.
Radmanovic, who has been remembered as a devoted father of six, was a relatively unknown figure in the underworld, according to sources close to him and the investigation. He knew Ghanim through his partners, who are sisters, and had arrived in Bali just two days before the shooting.
Radmanovic and his wife had planned to stay just five days with his sister and Ghanim to celebrate Jazmyn’s 30th birthday.
Charging
Outside court Thursday, Gourdeas told reporters through her Indonesian lawyer that she wanted her husband’s accused killers to face the death penalty. She and Ghanim had previously told prosecutors they did not know who carried out the attack nor would they want Radmanovic dead.
The brazenness of the shooting, in a country known for the death penalty, has some underworld actors worried that violence is increasing as unions More and more they “outsource” jobs to inexperienced gunmen to hire them..
The Australian Federal Police did not say whether it was carrying out its own investigations into the shooting and gangland war in Australia, instead directing investigations to Indonesian police.
The Australian government has been providing consular assistance to the defendants since their arrest, and Foreign Minister Penny Wong has reiterated Australia’s opposition to the death penalty.
In Bali on Thursday, armed police and sniffer dogs combed the court and guarded Gourdeas and his family as they watched the trial, which continues on November 3.
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