lebanese in australia crime
The evidence of the two girls was given in closed court hearings but I permitted the press to have access to the transcripts of the evidence on the basis that the names of the two girls were not revealed and no photographs were taken of them. The Beqaa Valley, a fertile valley in east Lebanon and one of the country's most important farming regions, is also known for being one of the most important cannabis cultivating regions in the Middle East. I pointed out at the time that he was likely to get the biggest sentence ever imposed for these sort of offences and surely he would want to present something to ameliorate his part in these crimes. A mobile phone was then used by someone in this group to secure the attendance of another group who arrived in a car. I then had to give them quite complex directions about the facts in the trial and the law, which has its complexities. It was about 9pm at this stage. In 2002, people born in Australia were imprisoned at a rate of 156 per 100,000 while those born overseas were imprisoned at a rate of 146 per 100,000. The young girl was subjected to extensive questioning by counsel for each of the accused and repeatedly it was suggested to her that she had consented to everything and/or was exaggerating or lying. The first community of Lebanese in Australia were Maronite Christians, quickly followed by a large Muslim community. That much was confirmed by Lieutenant Colonel Rony Ghanem of Lebanons Internal Security Force. This reflected his complete contempt for the court process and his rejection of any notion of contrition or remorse. 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. 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. The Pursuit of Justice, published by New Holland Publishers, RRP $35, is available from all good book retailers or online at New Holland Publishers. And these guys are well armed. However, the website of the Voice of Lebanon radio station in Melbourne, mentioned important information, accompanied by two pictures of the dead, and a summary of the information that the offender was a friend of the assassinated Tony Yazbek and she has a 10-year-old daughter, who lives with her mothers grandmother, and that the late Sarkis Abboud was a victim of his presence with his friend. At that time, according to the radio. Skaf is now in Goulburn's Supermax prison serving a 31-year sentence with a minimum of 28 years. Meanwhile Bilal Skaf and others with him got into the van in which they had come to the park and drove around to the telephone box where one of them produced a gun and ordered her to get inside. You just want more, Basha says. The identity of the four men in the red van has never properly been revealed. 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). However, data also suggests that the city has been experiencing a steady rise in crime rates for the past three years. Look what happened in Germany in the 1940s., Selda Dagistanli, a lecturer in criminology at the University of Western Sydney, agrees that, When you attach criminal behavior to ethnicity, thats racist, and it makes you question the motivation of the people saying it., New South WalesPolice Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas says the problem in Bankstown and other parts of southwestern Sydney is not as bad as it seems. When the verdicts came in after the conclusion of this trial, I informed counsel that I would not sentence their clients until all trials concerning them had concluded. Europe I remanded all of them in custody. Criminal organizations are mostly based around extended crime families with a large number of associates from their community. Not one of them showed that fear of criminal proceedings or of jail was ever in their minds. 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". Bilal Skaf and up to eleven other men who were never identified, then turned up in a van sometime later. Evidence was presented to show the layout of the park, the positioning of lights and buildings in the park and evidence was given by the complainant that these events happened at night time. United States Those involved in these crimes committed them between 10 August and 30 August 2000 on three separate occasions. Many of the rapists have never been identified and police fear there were more victims who did not come forward. Trad thinks the problem can be nipped in the bud by changing the way schools deal with Lebanese delinquents. [1] Due to the vast international Arab diaspora and along with a certain amount of organized criminals active in their respective communities, the Beqaa Valley has become one of the most infamous marijuana and hashish exporting regions in the world. The improvement was remarkable Imagine what they would be capable of if they had a better start in life., PHOTOS:Wildfires Scorch Australia As Temperatures Reach Record Highs. Political overview. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Counsel for each of the other accused, as well as the Crown, then attacked Bilal Skaf in cross-examination, suggesting he was a liar. new id send all the ones in Australia back to lebanon and then drop a bomb. . Im still in a state of shock. Yet, the new gangland war fails to capture the imagination. National News Agency staff in Beirut found a broken . Crime 0 120 46.11 Crime rates in Australia Safety in Australia Contributors: 7102 Last update: February 2023 These data are based on perceptions of visitors of this website in the past 3 years. If I opened up my lunchbox and pulled out a Lebanese roll, I would get hassled. The complainant, who had been sexually assaulted by fourteen men something like forty times over four hours, could not identify him. 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. Still, the enormity of the tragedy requires a monumental effort to rebuild the shattered city. Coronavirus Manorama Online Lebanese families across generations in both rural and urban areas, including changes over time in occupations, education, religion, community activities and family values. The victim was taken from the station area and forced into public toilets where four men in this group sexually assaulted her, with one of them assaulting her twice. By 2016, the year of Australia . Our initial goal was 10,000. Many of these diaspora networks, including Impact Lebanon, emerged following mass anti-government protests in Lebanon in October 2019. Skaf was talking on a mobile phone to other people in Arabic. 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. Its just amazing to see how much traction it got, Diana Abbas, director of Impact Lebanon, says. It was non-stop, he says. What was it that caused Bilal Skaf to carefully plan this series of attacks on young women in Sydney? Those who pleaded guilty, were given lesser sentences than those who pleaded not guilty, because the law provided for this. Neither Ghanem nor Hajeid gave evidence and their cases were run on the basis that the girls could not identify them but that, of course, became very difficult for them when Bilal Skaf gave evidence that placed them at the park. business The children of refugees who fled Lebanon's civil war for peaceful Australia in the 1970s form a. majority of Australian militants fighting in the Middle East, according to about a dozen counter-terrorism officials, security experts and Muslim community members. 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. I live in the hyphen between those two identities, Abouzeid says, now en route to Beirut to salvage her home. I also told them to put out of their minds any religious or racial views they had. 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. Lebanese (and I went to school with a lot of them) don't, they hate Australia's, they hate our way of life and they don't want to . It seems that the police learned from him that the woman had stabbed his friend as well. Before we can solve it we need to understand it, he says, and Im not sure we do.. The crime was comparable to Lebanese gang rapes in Sydney. That is not the law. Many months later he pleaded guilty to a series of sexual offences that included the events of this night. Diaspora aid to Lebanon is meticulously processed to avoid funds falling into the hands of government officials and intermediaries accused of corruption, with support being sent directly to vetted NGOs, such as the Lebanese Red Cross. She was then dumped at a train station after being hosed down. The main difference is that Greeks & Italians want to live in Australia under Australian laws and love our way of life, they mix with Australian's, they want their kids to and they great people. Lebanon's murder and theft crimes have increased by 144 percent amid the ongoing national crisis compared to the same period last year, according to a study conducted by the Beirut-based . They found him dead in his apartment in a building in the same area, while Abboud died in an ambulance while she was transporting him to Nearby hospital. I was lucky; I got a second chance. There was no doubt about Skaf's involvement because, apart from his own admissions, the DNA evidence linking him to the events was very clear. Will this be the catalyst that prompts the move home? They wanted wide publicity. As for their killing, the police learned about it from citizens who told them that they had found Aboud quarreling in a side road in one of the citys suburbs. Instead of taking her to the Harbour Bridge, Mohammed Skaf drove her to a park in Greenacre. . The . One of the victims, an 18-year-old woman, was raped 40 times by 14 men over four hours in an attack coordinated by mobile phone. That group, which became known as the 'Skaf gang' after their leader, Bilal Skaf, went on a 20-day rampage in which four young women were violated in three pack rapes shortly before the 2000 Olympics. The criminal justice system judged and punished the perpetrators. UAE Im Lebanese Australian and Im proud of both parts of my identity. Fortunately she wasnt home at the time. This trial concerned violent sexual assaults on a young woman of 18 who was travelling home by train on an afternoon on 30 August 2000. I like Middle Eastern food. A range of factors impinge upon criminal behaviour . Skaf clearly was the leader. A 44-year-old woman killed two Lebanese residing in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria in the southeast of Australia. A number of family members of the gang members, other than the Skafs, gave evidence and it seemed to me that they were decent, honourable people, who were troubled about the criminal involvement of these young men. In the early 1980s, as a young detective I was attached to the Drug Squad at . 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. [4] Some of the more notorious Arab mafia families include the infamous el-koura Younes Clan, the Shams Clan the Al Zein Clan[5] and the Miri Clan from Bremen. investment He later pleaded guilty to some of the offences and when he did, I directed that he not be identified by his name. To my mind, the community deserved to be protected from Bilal Skaf for many years. Lebanese organized crime is active in the country of Lebanon itself, as well as in countries and areas with a large Arab community, most notably United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and in the Triple Frontier in South America. Praying for the injured, missing & dead, she wrote on Twitter. Ill work till the end to help save this country from this corrupt mafia government., Beirut blast timeline: what we know and what we don't, Beirut explosion: anger at officials grows after missed warnings, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Prospective jurors were told the trial might last a month and would involve allegations that the three accused men, with several others, sexually assaulted two young women against their will. 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. One upstanding group of Lebanese males got sentences up to 49 years prison for kidnapping girls on the street and raping them. To the streets, thats where., Australian-Lebanese filmmaker George Basha agrees. 11:06 EST 27 May 2018 There was also evidence that each of the accused and the men in the red van abused the girls, calling them 'sluts' and threatened retribution on them if either of them had VD or AIDS. Criminals are coming together from a really diverse range of backgrounds to do bad things together. Nevertheless he acknowledges Middle Eastern organized crime in the city is not going to go away and more research is needed. 33. Facing racism at school and pressure at home, children from Middle Eastern families in Australia are dragged into world of organized crime and ethnic bloodletting, Lebanese youths are searched by Australian police in Sydney. 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. 2. And an otherwise law-abiding majority erect a wall of silence when dealing with police they regularly accuse and sue for thuggery and racial profiling. Until this point, Hajeid and Ghanem had been on bail. Once you got into the zone where you are powerful and people are scared of you, you dont want to stop. meadowbrook country club estates; michael mullen obituary; pamela gluckin obituary new york; antonio tonyboy floirendo jr biography This article (a transcribed speech by former Australian Police Detective Tim Priest) gives an important look at why there was "white riot" on the Cronulla beaches. The most common crimes involve physical altercations, trespassing, burglary, and damaging public or private property. I gave that consent. The worst part was that these filthy criminals were in prison and the rapes kept happening. I will clean up, I will repair what I can repair, and then Ill live there. live broadcast It was obviously carefully planned and skilfully executed. The commission of a crime that shocked the Lebanese, who numbered 70 to 90,000 between expatriates and descendants in the city. 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. We started with 10-12 members, now we have 160 members and so many volunteering requests, Abbas says, adding that the membership has spread to diaspora communities in numerous countries, including Australia. Ukraine They were classified as a Turk due to Lebanon being a province of the Ottoman Empire at that time. In Australia crimes are legally classified as either indictable or non-indictable. One of Australia's most redneck outback parliamentarians, Bob Katter, is the descendant of Lebanese immigrants. ', Then Labor premier Bob Carr has said of the original 55-year sentence: 'It was certainly a headline grabber, it met community expectations, it sent a powerful message to any punk with violent tendencies on the margins of gang activity that this was very dangerous behaviour.'. Australia's law defines rape as "unlawful sexual act with another person by force; without their consent." The rapists' record tape a great amount of their rape and this was used in court as evidence. They were an attack on society, but why? A lot of the racism against Lebanese people in Australia however dates to before 9/11. I also prohibited the taking of any photographs of the accused, two of whom were on bail. Subscribe here: http://9Soci.al/chmP50wA97J Full Episodes: https://9now.app.link/uNP4qBkmN6 | The Facebook Gangster (2021)For investigative reporter Nick McK. Bilal Skaf sat throughout the sentencing process looking as if he could not care less about any of it. from Australia's law defines rape as "unlawful sexual act with another person by force; without their consent." 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. COVID-19 The existence of criminal activity among these communities is not the issue. However, although these cases attracted some media attention while the trials were proceeding, they passed largely with little comment.'. 3. Few crimes in recent Australian history have stirred more community anger and fear than a series of pack rapes committed by more than a dozen young Lebanese men in Sydney's west 18 years ago. Lebanese organized crime syndicates generally are active . The 37-year-old Carlingford man and 40-year-old Dundas Valley man have been charged with Dealing in the proceeds of crime - money or property worth $1,000,000 or more, contrary to section 400.3 (1) of the Criminal Code (Cth). It is also possible that there were other victims who have never come forward. My apartment, like others close to the blast, is . 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. Dec 13, 2005. 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. The way we have been connecting is through Slack, getting visuals out on social media to attract peoples attention, and direct people in a very structured way as to how they can help, she explains. Of these, 52.5 per cent were males and 47.5 per cent were females. In the 1980s . What we found was that in a matter of weeks they were excelling the other kids in school. Factors such as unemployment, education, socio-economic disadvantage and lack of access to services have more bearing than ethnicity on crime rates. A Year Later, Unanswered Questions and Bad Blood, The Nanjing Massacre: Scenes from a Hideous Slaughter 75 Years Ago, Blood Money: Tsunami Recovery Funds Go to Japans Whaling Industry. Expat families: 3.413 USD. Finally, the rural areas of Sydney are home to small-time gangs who act as enforcers for the bigger gangs in the city. What we know about the Beirut explosion video explainer, caused by the unsafe storage of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, anti-government protests in Lebanon in October 2019, president Emmanuel Macron toured the devastated scenes. Bilal Skaf was one of the people who then approached the victim whom he grabbed by the hair. Latest news He did not believe he would be caught. "The passion is there. He remained the dominant figure and was the person who directed everything that later happened on that night in the park at Greenacre. 'What caused the unprecedented public interest in the Skaf trials, what set them apart from all other sexual assault trials, was the repeated attacks in a short time frame by a gang with a carefully planned strategy,' Finnane writes. In Germany these clans mostly settled in Berlin, Bremen and Essen where they became involved in narcotics trafficking, weapons trafficking, extortion, prostitution, illegal gambling, car theft, money laundering and armed robbery. A large number of former Lebanese citizens immigrated to several major German cities under political asylum and refugee status. Crimes under Lebanese laws may not be considered offences in Australia. His counsel acknowledged the force of what I had said but again said that he would be presenting no evidence. 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