Sydney - Drug money, violence and a code of silence is what
holds together the Hell's Angels, the Finks and other self-styled
outlaw motorcycle gangs in Australia.
Consider the case of career hoodlum Wayne Hudson, a Hell's Angel
who defected from the Finks and is now in jail for blazing away with
his gun on a Melbourne street.
Before handing him over to police, chums chained Hudson up and
used an oxyacetylene blow torch to obliterate his Hell's Angel
tattoos.
'They are masters of violence and intimidation,' said author and
former Hell's Angel Jay Doybns. 'The way they've conducted their
business for 60 years is not that of a club of fun-loving, rebellious
motorcycle enthusiasts. It's a history ... of violence and crime.'
In May, it became illegal to be a member of the Finks in Adelaide.
Sydney is likely to follow after the New South Wales state Parliament
passed laws that set up a new offence of criminal association and
enabled police to arrest those wearing gang colours or associating
with other gang members.
What stung politicians into action were intergang clashes that
spilled over into the public domain. Traditionally, violence has been
kept in-house.
Comanchero boss Mahmoud Hawi, 28, was among a dozen gangsters
picked up after a March 22 clash at Sydney's airport in which a
Hell's Angels was bludgeoned to death in the arrivals hall. A week
later, an unknown gunman put six bullets into the brother of the dead
man.
Hawi, who was in hiding before giving himself up to police, is
seeking bail after being charged over the airport bashing.
'What we're seeing is disputes over access to drug markets,' said
Crime Commission chief John Lawler.
But the gang members like to present themselves in a different
light: as law-abiding citizens who are fond of riding motorbikes and
dressing up in leather.
Allan Sarkis, the Notorious gang boss, has even demanded his
members be accorded dignity. 'We don't want to be portrayed to the
public as we've been,' Sarkis said shortly before his arrest for
possessing drugs. 'We want to be acknowledged and respected as a
motorcycle club, not as gangsters.'
Some gangs have engaged lawyers to fight the laws now ranged
against them.
'It is submitted that proceedings against an association made up
of grandfathers, union members and gainfully employed people is not
in the public interest,' Craig Caldicott, the Finks' lawyer, said in
his submission to the South Australian state government.
To try to win over hearts and minds, the gangs have set up the
United Motorcycle Club Council and engaged barrister Geoffrey
Nicholson to try to knock down the laws ranged against them.
'I would like to think that any right-thinking civil libertarian
member of the community would like these laws revisited somehow,' he
said. 'Today a bike club, tomorrow a trade union.'
But Michael Kennedy, a University of Western Sydney academic and
former police officer, is glad to see action against the gangs.
'You've got to stop making this like a Billy Graham crusade where
you're trying to convert all the bikies to become normal members of
society,' he said. 'If you make it clear to them that if they don't
stop this, that they're going to have their assets, they're going to
have their bikes seized, they're going to have their colours seized,
you strip them of their identity and they don't exist.'
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