Australia revs up action against motorcycle gangs (News Feature)

By Sid Astbury May 15, 2009, 4:42 GMT

   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.'