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Six years' jail for bikie associate who ambushed and shot victim

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Court Reporter for The Age

A bikie gang associate who ambushed and shot a man twice after he had kidnapped and tortured a female friend of the gunman has been jailed for six and a half years.

Supreme Court Justice Terry Forrest said Feda Malkic, 40, a former Bosnia-Herzegovina special forces officer, had been wearing a balaclava and lying in wait for his "prey" before shooting Ashok Alahanathan in the arm and stomach in the foyer of a Parkville apartment block on March 11, 2014.

Justice Forrest said Malkic had known Mr Alahanathan, an ice dealer, for about a year before they had had a falling out.

"In late 2013, a group of men, alleged to be members of a motorcycle gang, were attempting to intimidate Mr Alahanathan," the judge said.

"Various threats were made to him. You offered to help him by engaging some acquaintances of yours, also motorcycle gang members, to persuade the other men to back off. Apparently they carried out these instructions.

"As a consequence, both you and your motorcycle gang acquaintances regarded Mr Alahanathan as indebted to you all.

"You demanded money from him and drugs to be supplied on credit. He declined to pay or to extend that credit and a conflict developed. It seems that he had spread the word that he would get in first if there was to be any conflict."

The judge said Malkic feared Mr Alahanathan was planning to kill him after claiming he had kidnapped a female friend and tortured her to get her to give him Malkic's address.

Malkic decided to shoot the victim in a pre-emptive strike.

"This was a vicious attack on an unarmed man in a populous area," Justice Forrest said on Thursday when jailing Malkic for six and a half years with a non-parole period of four years and three months. Malkic pleaded guilty to charges of intentionally causing serious injury and using and possessing an unregistered handgun.

"I accept that you were unsettled by Mr Alahanathan's threats and believed them to be genuine. That provides an explanation as to why, at the age of 40 and with no prior convictions, you determined to offend in this very serious manner. It cannot excuse it. This court cannot countenance citizens taking the law upon themselves. Anarchy would result."

Justice Forrest said Malkic, a divorced father of a 13-year-old boy, had been an officer in the Bosnian war between 1992-94 and developed post-traumatic stress disorder after being held prisoner.

The judge accepted Malkic's judgment before shooting Mr Alahanathan had been impaired to some extent by his mental state but his hypervigilance and anxiety played no role in the actual shooting.

"You hid in wait for your prey. You donned a balaclava. You shot an unarmed man. When he went to ground you shot him again. There is not a hint of hypervigilance or rapid hair-trigger response to your actions.

"The background to your offending demonstrates that, if you were not actively involved in the drug trafficking world, you were on its periphery."

Malkic was arrested on March 19, 2014, in Chapel Street, Prahran, when armed with a loaded five-shot .38 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver and a taser.

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