Zissis Haridemos identified as Kokomo's nightclub brawler after non-publication order expires

A non-publication order over the identity of Zissis Haridemos, 28, expired at the end of Monday, allowing media to name him in connection with the July 2020 incident at Kokomo's in Civic.

An agreed statement of facts, tendered to the ACT Magistrates Court, shows Haridemos started celebrating his birthday at his Red Hill home with friends and family on the night in question.

He and other attendees, including killer Frederick Elijah Mercy Tuifua, consumed alcohol and prescription medication to varying degrees before venturing out to Kokomo's.

At the nightclub, another member of the party group, Maximilian Ellis Kurt Budack, tangled with some members of the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang's Canberra chapter.

After a trivial dispute about the whereabouts of a satchel Budack had been carrying, security guards turfed him out of Kokomo's and the rest of the birthday group left.

When they returned a short time later, a wild brawl broke out and Tuifua murdered the bikie gang's local commander, Pitasoni Ulavalu, 48, by stabbing the victim in the neck with a knife.

"There is no evidence to suggest that other members of [the birthday party] group knew at the time of the incident that Tuifua had a knife or that he had used it to stab Ulavalu," the agreed facts state.

"Also during the altercation, [Haridemos] struck [a different bikie] three times in quick succession."

Haridemos, who was initially charged with affray, was arrested in August 2020 and remanded in custody.

He spent 59 days behind bars before being granted bail on conditions that required him to live under virtual house arrest for the following 16 months.

A non-publication order was imposed in relation to his name at his first court appearance, after his lawyers applied for one on the basis there were fears for the safety of his family.

That application was made after Budack was shot in the face the previous week in an attack police suspect to be a reprisal linked to the death of Mr Ulavalu.

The order was revisited in February this year, when Haridemos struck a deal to plead guilty to a common assault charge if the allegation of affray was withdrawn.

Special magistrate Margaret Hunter sentenced him to a six-month good behaviour order and rejected his barrister's application for a permanent ban on his name being reported, taking into account prosecutor Luke Crocker's submission that there was evidence bikies already knew Haridemos' name.

Haridemos' counsel had argued vengeful bikies posed such a continuing threat it was not an exaggeration to say the 28-year-old hoped to one "walk down to the local shop, wherever he's going to be, and feel that somebody's not going to shoot him".

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While Ms Hunter declined to keep Haridemos' identity secret forever, she made an order banning publication of his name for nine months after his sentencing.

The order's expiry comes a week after Tuifua, also 28, faced the ACT Court of Appeal, where Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC argued his jail sentence should be extended.

Tuifua was sentenced last November to 20 years behind bars - a term Mr Drumgold claims is "manifestly inadequate" - after he pleaded guilty to three charges that included one of murder.

Four other men involved in the nightclub brawl previously pleaded guilty to affray charges and received jail terms which were either partially suspended or already served while on remand.

They are Budack, brothers Matthew and Osaiasi Kupu, and a man who cannot legally be named.

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