Australian man shot dead in front of wife in ‘gangland hit’ at Bali villa
Three suspects face the death penalty for plotting the murder of an Australian man gunned down in a gangland-style hit at a villa in Bali.
Zivan Radmanovic, 32, was killed just after midnight on June 13 after two men broke into his villa near Munggu Beach in Bali’s Badung district.
Sanar Ghanim, 34, was also shot in the attack and remains in hospital, while a third man was badly beaten.
Radmanovic was shot in a bathroom, where police found 17 bullet casings and two intact bullets.
His wife, Gourdeas Jazmyn, 30, told police that she suddenly woke up when she heard her husband screaming. She cowered under a blanket when she heard multiple gunshots.
She later found her husband’s body and the injured Australian, whose wife has also testified to seeing the attackers.
Mr Ghanim was previously in a relationship with the step-daughter of the late Carl Williams, a prominent Melbourne underworld figure, according to reports in Australia.
Williams rose from a low-level drug dealer to one of the kingpins in the city’s bloody gangland wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s which were later dramatized in the hit TV series Underbelly.
He was convicted in 2007 of ordering several killings and was serving a life sentence when he was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate three years later.
Reports link Mr Ghanim to the criminal underworld, stating he had served jail time over a non-fatal shooting in Melbourne in 2014.
Police earlier said they had detained two suspects, but further investigation led police to arrest a third man who helped them to prepare the killing, Bali Police Chief Daniel Adityajaya said.
He added: ‘The three suspects are Australian men, and they are now being held and questioned for further investigation.’
At least three witnesses at the villa told investigators that two gunmen, one wearing orange jacket with a dark helmet and another wearing a dark green jacket, a black mask and a dark helmet, arrived on a scooter at the villa around midnight.
Mr Adityajaya said the evidence collected so far means ‘we have confidence that the three (suspects) are the perpetrators’.
Two of the men were arrested late Tuesday in Singapore and at Jakarta’s Soekarno Hatta International Airport, while trying to flee.
Indonesian police didn’t say where the third suspect was apprehended.
Mr Adityajaya said the men are now being held in Bali and can face various charges, including murder and firearm charges, that could carry up to a life sentence or the death penalty if found guilty.
He said police are still investigating the motive and how they got the weapon as firearm ownership and use are heavily regulated in Indonesia.
‘We are still investigating the possibility of other suspects,’ Mr Adityajaya said.
He praised the collaboration between Indonesian police and immigration agencies in tracking the whereabouts of the suspects with the support of the Australian Federal Police and Interpol in the Southeast Asia region.
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