Sydney Gang War – From Mafia to Modern Killers

Sydney has always had an underworld, but the twenty-first century turned its criminal ecosystem into a digital battlefield. The old Calabrian crime dynasties once ruled with handshakes, silence, and bloodlines. By the 2010s, those traditions collided with new-age killers who swapped oaths for encrypted phones and executed rivals on suburban streets.

The feud between Abuzar Sultani and Pasquale Barbaro marked that turning point, when Sydney’s mafia heritage met its modern murder crews.

The Barbaro family represents the long shadow of the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta.

From the farms of Griffith, NSW, to drug-import syndicates in Melbourne and Sydney, each generation carried both wealth and death.

• Peter Pasquale Barbaro was murdered in Brisbane in 1990 after reportedly agreeing to testify against fellow Calabrian figures, a breach of omertà, the sacred code of silence.
• Pasquale Barbaro Snr was later jailed for organising one of Australia’s largest ecstasy imports, worth $440 million.
• Pasquale Timothy Barbaro, the grandson, inherited the family notoriety, luxury cars, designer suits, and the dangerous confidence of a man with too many enemies.
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By 2016, Sydney police described the Barbaros as “the old bloodlines under siege,” targeted not by rival Italians but by multicultural street crews competing for the same criminal profits.

Abuzar “Abs” Sultani, born 1989 in Afghanistan and raised in Western Sydney, looked like the immigrant success story: a business graduate from Macquarie University, teetotal, disciplined, polite. Yet behind the façade he was building an empire of fear.

Sultani’s “Afghan crew”, also known as Ab’s Boys or Murder Crew 13, included Siar Munshizada, Joshua Baines, and Mirwais Danishyar. They met in prison, forged brotherhood through violence, and later armed themselves with rifles, silencers, tasers, and police uniforms.

Between 2013 and 2016 they committed five murders across Sydney. Psychologists later described Sultani as possessing an “entrenched violent identity.” To him, killing was both duty and destiny.

Sultani’s obsession with revenge began in 2013 after the assassination of Joe Antoun, his mentor in the construction underworld. Rumours linked Pasquale Barbaro to the hit. Whether true or not, it sealed Barbaro’s fate.

For years, both men moved within Sydney’s overlapping criminal circles, property developers, bikies, and drug couriers, until their paths converged at Earlwood on the night of 14 November 2016.

At 9:30 p.m., Barbaro left property developer George Alex’s house on Larkhall Avenue, stepping into his Mercedes-Benz.

A stolen Audi A3 carrying Sultani’s gunmen pulled alongside. Automatic gunfire shredded the car. Barbaro fled on foot, shouting for help before collapsing.

Witnesses saw a man in dark clothing approach and fire two close-range shots into Barbaro’s head.

Within minutes, the Audi was torched in Concord, and the killers vanished in a Subaru WRX — unaware that police had planted a listening device inside.

On the recording, Sultani could be heard saying, “Get rid of everything. Burn the car.”

Those words would later become part of a digital evidence trail that destroyed his defence.

Sultani’s crew believed their Phantom Secure BlackBerry Messenger network was unbreakable. Each member had a codename, unconfirm, bulletproof, screamers, outta control and they spoke in slang, bragging about murders.

What they didn’t know: forensic experts in Canada and Australia had accessed deleted email drafts on BlackBerry servers.

Among them:

“It’s done. We driving …” Sultani

“Pasquale is officially dead.”  Munshizada

That discovery became a global milestone. The same digital forensics later inspired the AN0M sting that dismantled hundreds of crime networks worldwide.

In Sydney, it ended the myth that encrypted communication could protect killers.

Within two weeks of the murder, 29 November 2016, tactical teams stormed homes across Sydney.

Sultani, Munshizada, Baines, and Danishyar were arrested. Police linked them not only to Barbaro’s death but also to the killings of Michael Davey, Mehmet Yilmaz, Mark Easter, and Nikola Srbin.

It was one of the largest homicide operations in NSW history, drones, covert cameras, and months of intercepted calls documenting the crew’s every move.

After years of suppression orders, the public finally heard the truth in 2021.

Justice Des Fagan called the gang “a death squad motivated by ego and reputation.”

• Abuzar Sultani: Life imprisonment × 3 (no parole)
• Siar Munshizada: Life imprisonment (no parole)
• Joshua Baines: 36 years / 27 non-parole
• Mirwais Danishyar: 16 years / 11 non-parole

During sentencing, the men mocked the court. Munshizada held up a note reading “bias dog” and shouted, “Triple life? You serious?”

The judge replied simply that there was “nothing redeemable” in their acts.

With Sultani behind bars and Barbaro buried, Sydney’s criminal order fractured.

The once-dominant Calabrian mafia lost another heir; the new-breed multicultural syndicates lost their most feared leader.

Police say no retaliation ever came from the Barbaro side,  a sign that the old code of silence had finally yielded to fatigue and fear.

For the public, the killings confirmed that Sydney’s gang wars had evolved beyond ethnic loyalties. It was now about money, ego, and control of an ever-expanding drug economy.

The Sultani case transformed law-enforcement strategy. The Australian Federal Police cited it as a turning point — proof that even the most secret systems could be infiltrated.

What began as a Sydney feud became a blueprint for international cyber-forensics, leading directly to the global AN0M crackdown in 2021.

No encryption, it turned out, could bury a digital footprint.

The Sydney gang war was more than a battle between two men.

It symbolised the city’s metamorphosis, from family mafias bound by blood to networked killers bound by code.

Pasquale Barbaro died in a street that once promised safety; Abuzar Sultani will die in a cell built to contain monsters of his own making.

Sydney’s underworld survived both, but the war they ignited still flickers in the city’s shadows, waiting for the next name, the next feud, the next bullet.

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