In the past there was a code among crime gangs in Sydney that bodies in the street were bad for business, says Michael Duffy, the author of Drive By, a new novel about a Lebanese crime family and the efforts of a bigoted, dispirited police force to lock them up. I do not believe he will ever acknowledge the seriousness of what he did. Lebanese mafia is a Colloquial term for organized crime groups which origin from Lebanon and Levant. To give you an idea of what to expect, here are some rent averages for the most popular cities in Australia. The victim was then taken by car to a car park near the Bankstown Trotting Club where she was vaginally raped once and orally raped twice. The main activities of Arab gangs in Australia are narcotics and weapons trafficking, extortion, prostitution, car theft and money laundering. The men in the red van also sexually assaulted them in the same fashion, as well as punching them and kicking them. I will clean up, I will repair what I can repair, and then Ill live there. Dec 13, 2005. Fortunately she wasnt home at the time. wouldnt think twice tbh. I merely imposed sentences on a number of offenders. Unlike many of the rape cases of which I am aware, there was no previous contact between any of the perpetrators and the victims, except for the second one in which Mohammed Skaf selected a sixteen-year-old from his school to be a victim. Australian Lebanese families. When I commenced the summing up, I said this: This is the twenty-first century since the birth of Christ; we are not in the nineteenth, eighteenth or seventeenth centuries. They had hardly ever been over the Harbour Bridge and were quite concerned when that happened. Social media has been very important pages connected to diaspora networks create a ripple effect, which helps spread the word and mobilise the Lebanese diaspora across cities and continents.. We are afraid there is some connection between these guys here and the guys in Lebanon, he said during a three-month visit to Sydney earlier this year to exchange information on criminal syndicates with the New South Wales Police Forces Middle Eastern Crime Squad. If the value is 0, it means it is perceived as very low, and if the value is 100, it means it is perceived as very high. Coronavirus 'I reject this complaint as well,' he writes. I wont be packing up., For Melki, staying in Lebanon isnt simply about a place of residence, its about justice. The worst part was that these filthy criminals were in prison and the rapes kept happening. To the streets, thats where., Australian-Lebanese filmmaker George Basha agrees. The 1995 NSW Legislative Council standing committee on social issues reported that while Lebanese-Australian youth comprise 0.9% of . It was obviously carefully planned and skilfully executed. The two girls were then abandoned in the middle of the night in an area they did not know and forced to humiliate themselves by seeking assistance at around midnight from two people who were returning home from a social event. It is also possible that there were other victims who have never come forward. As a policy, multiculturalism was introduced by immigration minister Al . Bourse 2023 TIME USA, LLC. Frank Hakim, who emigrated to Australia at the age of 20 or so, was the first prominent Lebanese criminal. If a person who is guilty, pleads guilty, anxiety and stress to the victims is removed and it is reasonable to give lesser sentences. Life cannot. ShiaChat.com may be unavailable periodically Saturday night to Sunday evening while we migrate to new servers and perform some necessary updates. I was lucky; I got a second chance. . Among them is one Australian, with as many as 300,000 made homeless. The second trial had two accused only, Bilal Skaf and Mohammed Skaf, his younger brother. The theft occurred in a tightly secured area, further reflecting the cash-strapped country's continued decay. Im still in a state of shock. I also prohibited the taking of any photographs of the accused, two of whom were on bail. In 1996, 72 per cent of Lebanese in Australia lived in Sydney. Called next to him in the front seat, but she indicated that there was no evidence of his involvement in the crime, but only wanted him as a witness to it. But after seeing a close friend covered with petrol and set alight, he turned over a new leaf and began writing The Combination, a film about Lebanese schoolchildren who get caught up with gangs that won critical acclaim on release in 2010. Russia She was then dumped at a train station after being hosed down. and Lebanon were processed at a higher rate than the Australian-born in each of the five years. It was about 9pm at this stage. EXTRACT: After the sentences were imposed, many people would say things like, 'I'm glad you got those Lebs,' but I found myself trying to explain that I did not 'get those Lebs' at all. That concern was also reflected in the Australian governments own pledge of $2m this week, with foreign minister Marise Payne announcing the money would be evenly split between the UN World Food Programme and the Lebanese Red Cross. business His demeanour in the court room said that. But these days its worse. This surprising evidence was used by the Crown to bolster its case about identification. Those involved in these crimes committed them between 10 August and 30 August 2000 on three separate occasions. Africa What was it that caused Bilal Skaf to carefully plan this series of attacks on young women in Sydney? The Pursuit of Justice chronicles Finnane's legal career and lifelong campaigning for for social justice, particularly the treatment of those disadvantaged by the legal system. For most of his career, Finnane was not well known outside legal circles but that changed rapidly and forever when he presided over the Skaf rape trials. My apartment, like others close to the blast, is . At no point, however, did he identify the men in the red van. The . Racially motivated crime and punishment The treatment of a jailed Lebanese-Australian rapist has highlighted a wider debate about ethnicity and crime in this most cosmopolitan of nations,. ASIAN ORGANISED CRIME IN AUSTRALIA A Discussion Paper by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority February 1995 (return to table of contents) 5. Bilal Skaf raped her vaginally and another man, whom she could not identify, also raped her vaginally. Some people believe that Melbourne gangs are behind the new wave of crimes, but the numbers tell us that most unique offenders are Australia-born youths between the ages of 15 to 25. United States If the Crown proved to the satisfaction of the jury and beyond reasonable doubt that it was done without consent, then the Crown case on that charge was established. Finnane had been a judge of the New South District Court for a little more than a year when appointed to hear the Skaf gang trials, the first of which commenced on December 13, 2001. Horrific scenes of carnage on 4 August have given way to an enormous display of humanitys strength, strangers shoulder to shoulder beginning the daunting task of renewal. There were 72 drive-by shootings in Sydney in the first half of this year one every 2 days most of which took place in Bankstown, the City of Liverpool further west and in Sydneys inner-west. And given the history of government efforts to obtain information on race, Im not even sure its something we should be doing. It seemed clear to me that these men were sending out a message to the community in Sydney. The Ryan-inspired OCR had just six crimes. His attitude was the same throughout the trial. On that day Bilal Skaf, Belal Hajeid and Mohammed Ghanem sat behind bullet-proof glass in the dock of a court room within Sydney's Downing Centre complex. Criminal organizations however often transcend religious and cultural barriers, with members of the Sunni communities all involved in the same criminal organizations.[3]. They are also willing to purchase from Chinese importers and to wholesale to other groups, such as Romanian and Lebanese dealers. 34. There is no concept in our law that there is a category of person called loose women who are deemed somehow to consent and certainly there is no law that merely because a young woman might give an indication that she was friendly with someone and didn't protest too much when they were laying hands on her that she therefore was consenting to anything. Pluto Press, Annandale NSW. The protests inspired Lebanese abroad to get involved, prompting would-be activists to connect virtually and volunteer. His counsel acknowledged the force of what I had said but again said that he would be presenting no evidence. She does not have to fight to the death to protect herself from sexual assault. Skaf was a small man, rather thin, with black hair and a sharp face. The two girls were unaware of the red van until sometime after the men in the white van conveyed them to a park at Greenacre some hours later. Expat families: 2.640 USD. The assailants broke the door and its lock into the archive room. Single expats: 1.773 USD. At the time, Mohammed Skaf was still a schoolboy and attended the same school as the victim, to whom he was known as 'Sam'. Another car then pulled up which had in it, amongst others, Mohammed Skaf. I also told the jury that 'this is not a court of morals' and explained that they might not approve of the conduct of some of the participants because they thought they were acting immorally, but that was not the question at all. Will this be the catalyst that prompts the move home? You cant fathom the despair and destruction., Kassis, an English teacher, is one of thousands of Beiruti residents who have been on the streets, cleaning the shopfronts and homes devastated by Tuesdays blast. The Ones That Didnt Make It: Australia-Bound Refugees Languish in Indonesia, Circle Sentencing: Alternative Justice in Australia, Wildfires Scorch Australia As Temperatures Reach Record Highs, Nelson Mandelas Extraordinary Life: An Interactive Timeline, How Did Gaddafi Die? Latest news Each girl denied this and gave evidence that Skaf, and those with him in the white van, persistently put pressure on them to engage in oral sex in the van on the way to Greenacre. This is probably Katter's most famous and funny video, wait until the end. And that it happened because of incompetence and corruption.. Both Mohammed Skaf and the victim went and saw her mother and got her consent as the trip was going to be on a Saturday night. Average rent in Melbourne. Collins, J. I gave that consent. The girls in the car were very concerned at this point, but too scared to get out and run away. Men of Middle Eastern appearance banteramicably in Arabic within tea rooms and coffee shops, while women wearing headscarves, hijabs and, on the odd occasion, burqas wheel prams through Centro, Bankstowns sparkling white shopping center. So the problem we have now in Sydney is a ramification of what has been going on in Lebanon.. The identity of the four men in the red van has never properly been revealed. That is not the law. Manorama Online And those six included domestic violence, random breath testing, theft, robbery, assaults and motor vehicle theft - no drugs, organised crime, firearms, shootings, attempted murders or homicides. Malayalam News Still, the enormity of the tragedy requires a monumental effort to rebuild the shattered city. years have drawn attention to Lebanese crime and to police searches for suspects 'of Middle Eastern appearance'.10 Lebanese Muslim clerics such as Sheik Taj el-Din al Al-Hilali, known as the mufti or spiritual leader of Australia's Muslims and imam of the Sunni Mosque in Lakemba,11 or Sheikh Abdul Salam Zoud, are often in the news in . Another four men were in a red van that followed the white van. I cannot recall any other evidence being presented by him or on his behalf. Expat families: 3.413 USD. Worldwide pandemic lockdowns have only made it easier for Lebanese expats to coordinate. The girl was just sixteen years old. The Lebanese community leader says Sydney's legendary Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad (or MEOCS) should "never have been established in the first place - or at least not been given such a terrible title". The young girl who was the victim of these rapes could identify Mohammed Skaf, whom she knew well. Now retired from the District Court and back in private practice, Finnane has written about this terrible chapter in the country's criminal annals in a memoir about his life on the bench and at the bar. He told them they could expect there to be media publicity and that they should ignore anything they read outside court. They were quite friendly at school and he suggested that she come with him on a drive to go and look at the Harbour Bridge on a Saturday. Culture I directed that he be known only as 'H', but his identity was not revealed in this first trial. The following is an edited extract of The Pursuit of Justice by Michael Finnane, QC: All three accused were Australian citizens whose parents had come from Lebanon. The first occurred from 1880 to 1947 when many Maronite, Melkite and Orthodox Christians migrated. At first they resisted, but we made them believe that respect is something every child deserves, but that they needed to take action to earn that respect, he says. Australia In Sydney, Disaffected Lebanese Kids Caught in Spiraling Gang Violence Facing racism at school and pressure at home, children from Middle Eastern families in Australia are dragged. This trial concluded on 11 July 2002 and concerned events of 12 August 2000, only two nights after the attacks on the two girls from Chatswood. 'What the Skaf gang did was to enable multiple men to defile and degrade four young women. The commission of a crime that shocked the Lebanese, who numbered 70 to 90,000 between expatriates and descendants in the city. With Lebanons economy in tatters, led by a government widely accused of corruption, international donors and diaspora networks are the only hope for desperate Beirutis facing a food shortage and lack of shelter. Mobile phone technology was used on each occasion to coordinate the attacks, which were well planned and carried out with determination by young men, one as young as fourteen, the oldest being Bilal Skaf at twenty-one years of age. Of these, 52.5 per cent were males and 47.5 per cent were females. . In the case of the Lebanese in Australia , specifically Sydney, they took this to another level and built a bad reputation in a number of areas: organised crime, petty crime (robbing and beating up people), questionable business practices (famous for not paying for services rendered or under delivering). There were a series of instances of forced oral intercourse by each of the accused men and H, as well as Y and the men in the red van. But material losses, even huge painful ones, are things that one day can be replaced. In the face of such catastrophic ruin, the only option local residents had was to help. By The press was also prevented from providing any likenesses or descriptions of the accused or their racial origins. [2], Arab organized crime was introduced in Australia after the mass immigration of Arab people after the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s to the end of the 1980s. Average rent in Canberra. Skaf used condoms and threw them on the ground. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. While Finnane's sentencing of the Skaf gang members was widely lauded and drew praise from many politicians, he was criticised privately by some other judges. According to exclusive statistics from the armed crime squad, there has been a five-fold increase in non-fatal shootings in the north-west in four years and the region now sees almost two thirds of Victoria's non-fatal shootings. And you, have you seen the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the sky of Barn? What we found was that in a matter of weeks they were excelling the other kids in school. Its just amazing to see how much traction it got, Diana Abbas, director of Impact Lebanon, says. None generated anything like the public attention these trials drew. Our initial goal was 10,000. The devastation has profoundly touched Australias 250,000-strong Lebanese community, with the immediate sense of despair now transitioning to a desperate urge to assist. The girls had no idea where they were and were obviously terrified. Football Because the two complainants could only give vague descriptions of Hajeid and Ghanem, their counsel cross-examined the complainants to establish doubts about their identification. When the victim went to get into the car, however, she saw two other men there whom she did not know and did not expect would be there. Bilal Skaf was the eldest and was about 21 years of age. My sentence on him was substantially reduced by the Court of Criminal Appeal, which also reduced the sentences on some of the others involved, but not all of them. The trial was quite tense. However, data also suggests that the city has been experiencing a steady rise in crime rates for the past three years. The last person to plead guilty was a friend of Mohammed Skaf. Ghanem's convictions for his participation in the attacks that were the subject of the first trial, however, were confirmed. In the early 1980s, as a young detective I was attached to the Drug Squad at . Australia Arab organized crime was introduced in Australia after the mass immigration of Arab people after the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s to the end of the 1980s. Praying for the injured, missing & dead, she wrote on Twitter. Bilal Skaf sat throughout the sentencing process looking as if he could not care less about any of it. Lebanese people have become integrated the most in Australian society. Each of them also denied agreeing at any time, in the van or in the park, to oral sex with these men and the men in the red van. Within these neighbourhoods lies the ravaged home of award-winning Lebanese-Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid. The damage is extensive, like all the other apartments in the area. Result: gun crime in western Sydney and northern Melbourne often involves Lebanese Australians, as we saw with the murder last month of Hamad Assaad, himself a suspected hitman. They were an attack on society, but why? The trial for these ofences was particularly horrifying. They made very little attempt to cover their tracks. Knowing this much corruption gives me more reason not to leave Lebanon. Those accompanying Bilal Skaf on 12 August, perhaps ten, perhaps eleven men, have not been brought to trial and many of those involved in the horrific spate of sexual assaults on 30 August 2000 have not been brought to trial. Bilal Skaf, however, elected to give evidence. I was always hopeful that the people I sentenced in other cases might see the point of rehabilitation and, undoubtedly, some of them did. He made and received most of the Arabic language phone calls, which were used to tell the men in the red van who he had with him and where they were going. Conviction of Skaf was inevitable. It is a crime that assaults human dignity. J., Noble, G. Poynting, S. and Tabar, P. (2000) Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime. Until this point, Hajeid and Ghanem had been on bail. I then summed up the entire case, dealing with all the evidence, all the arguments and the law that applied. Frequently, whilst sitting in the dock, he clicked his fingers towards his counsel, summoning him over. Earlier we met Redfern-based Frank Hakim, the first major Lebanese criminal in Sydney, and younger men such as Louis Bayeh and Danny Karam. When they obliged, he crushed the foam cups and spread the debris onto the court floor. Mr Inbetween (2018-2021) TV-MA | 30 min | Crime, Drama 8.6 Rate this It was because the police had given up fighting back. Each girl was questioned by the Crown prosecutor first and then cross-examined by each of the counsel for the accused. China trot I also told them to put out of their minds any religious or racial views they had. BEIRUT (AP) Unknown assailants broke into the offices of Lebanon's state-run National News Agency and stole the servers that contain its archives, the Information Ministry said Monday. In the mid-1960s he obtained the protection of Lennie McPherson and proceeded to provide protection himself to Lebanese and other ethnic gaming clubs. Skaf did all the talking and suggested a trip in a car and puffing some marijuana. The gang's ringleader, Skaf, denied his role in the crimes despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt and showed no remorse even after he was sentenced to 55 years in prison. 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