The existence of criminal activity among these communities is not the issue. I thought she was a particularly brave young woman who refused to give in to any of these suggestions. Stars: Travis Fimmel, Jemmason Power, Talijah Blackman-Corowa, Eden Cassady Votes: 2,921 3. 'During the sentencing process at the end of the Skaf trials, I expressed the view that what this gang did was worse than murder. He put to me in submissions that the offences had taken place over a twenty-day period and I should impose a sentence that ensured his client spent no more than twenty years in jail. I also told them to put out of their minds any religious or racial views they had. Bikie gangs such as the Nomads recruit heavily from among Lebanese Muslims, as have jihadist recruiters. The jury considered this very carefully and were out considering their verdicts for a number of days but, when they came back, they convicted the three accused on all charges. One of them was a fourteen-year-old boy with an intellectual disability who was known, following directions by me, as H, and two brothers, Mahmoud Sanoussi and Mohammed Sanoussi. 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. Many months later he pleaded guilty to a series of sexual offences that included the events of this night. Sports The same trial process occurred as happened in the first trial and during my summing up I made the same remarks about the entitlement of a woman to say no. The last person to plead guilty was a friend of Mohammed Skaf. 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 men in the van departed quickly and the man took her to his flat, calmed her down and helped her call a friend who eventually came and took her home. The theft occurred in a tightly secured area, further reflecting the cash-strapped country's continued decay. He was the gang boss and the organiser of everything that happened. We tried setting it up once but it didnt work, says Don Weatherburn, director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. He had convictions for offences of dishonesty and it was thus easy for the Crown to establish that he was a man of bad character. The criminal justice system judged and punished the perpetrators. In the 1980s . The . But below the surface of this lower-middle class success story is a Middle Eastern ghetto terrorized by members of its community. The number of perpetrators of these crimes has been climbing steadily in recent years, with around six thousand imprisoned in 2021, compared to around half of this number who were imprisoned for. 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. (MORE:The Ones That Didnt Make It: Australia-Bound Refugees Languish in Indonesia), In the last few decades unfortunately we have not had peace in Lebanon, Pierre Semaan, of the Australian Lebanese Christian Foundation, tells TIME. The devastation has profoundly touched Australia's 250,000-strong Lebanese community, with the immediate sense of despair now transitioning to a desperate urge to assist. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. If a person who is guilty, pleads guilty, anxiety and stress to the victims is removed and it is reasonable to give lesser sentences. For Melbourne-born Alia Melki, that urge to help hit her as immediately as the blast itself. The first found that Middle-Eastern Australians reported more discrimination compared with non-Middle-Eastern Australians. My understanding was that the relevant agencies would report back to Australia, either through our UN office in Geneva or New York, how they spent that money, and the government would see that as being accountable to the Australian taxpayer, he says. It came as a surprise to me that nothing was going to be presented to me by counsel for Bilal Skaf. Yet, the new gangland war fails to capture the imagination. I have no intention of attempting to justify my sentences. The other two were also fairly small, but with the sorts of faces that could easily be forgotten. Growing up in western Sydney, I was bullied and picked on for everything I did and stood for. To condemn the racialisation of crime is not to deny that there are Lebanese Australians or Vietnamese Australians who commit crimes. (2001) The Lebanese . Lebanese Migration to Australia There have been three main waves of immigration from Lebanon to Australia. they deserve nothing less and we'd be making the world a better place. The gang assaulted the two girls, by punching and kicking them and, of course, by dragging them across a park by the neck. Lebanese-Christians have been immigrating to Australia for a very long time now and they have assimilated extremely well into Australian society. I consider my sentences imposed on the members of this gang were warranted. More discrimination was reported by Middle-Eastern males compared with females on dealings with the police, disrespect, name-calling, and distrust. He extended his criminal activities and eventually became known as "the Lebanese . 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. It was about 9pm at this stage. Knowing this much corruption gives me more reason not to leave Lebanon. I hope that those who have been released do rehabilitate or, at the very least, that they do not re-offend. 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. However, data also suggests that the city has been experiencing a steady rise in crime rates for the past three years. Until this point, Hajeid and Ghanem had been on bail. One of the dead was Sarkis Abboud, 61 years old, and the second was his friend, Tony Yazbek, two years younger. . 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. Earlier we met Redfern-based Frank Hakim, the first major Lebanese criminal in Sydney, and younger men such as Louis Bayeh and Danny Karam. At some time after this first trial began, I was informed that there were other trials involving the same men and other men in which kidnapping, forced sexual intercourse and other assaults were involved. Its just a mess. Abouzeid was in Melbourne at the time of the blast, relying on relatives to send photos of the destruction. 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. When later interviewed, Chami claimed that Bilal Skaf told him, 'There's a slut at the Bankstown Trotting Club.' With Covid-19 restrictions preventing Lebanese Australians from holding in-person activities, such as fundraising events and protests, local activists like Maakasa are relying on Instagram and Facebook to generate support. I cant tell what some of the things are in the photos, what they once were. One of the dead was Sarkis Abboud, 61 years old, and the second was his friend, Tony Yazbek, two years younger. He and the others who accompanied him then dragged the unfortunate girl to the middle of the park where they pulled of her clothes and proceeded to run their hands over her body. In the early 1980s, as a young detective I was attached to the Drug Squad at . A large number of former Lebanese citizens immigrated to several major German cities under political asylum and refugee status. 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? In the park, each girl was dragged by the neck to a different part of the park and forced to let these men have oral sex with her. He remained the dominant figure and was the person who directed everything that later happened on that night in the park at Greenacre. economy Average rent in Canberra. Women's rights activists had long demanded that Article . This meant that the Crown could seek my consent to cross-examine him to show that he was a man of bad character. 26 May . Skaf clearly was the leader. Criminal organizations are mostly based around extended crime families with a large number of associates from their community. Subsequent migration was steady until an influx occurred surrounding the Arab . 4. ShiaChat.com may be unavailable periodically Saturday night to Sunday evening while we migrate to new servers and perform some necessary updates. Another four men were in a red van that followed the white van. The blast flattened the neighbourhoods closest to the port, such as Gemmayze and Mar Mikhael tourist hotspots and the heart of Beiruts famous nightlife, now as haunting as Stalingrad. The three of them lived with their parents in houses in the suburbs surrounding Bankstown. 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. The police arrested the perpetrator of the crime as she climbed to the tram, after people called who reported a woman with blood. Why did those who joined him, become involved? 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. Australian police have arrested more than 200 people involved in organised crime after infiltrating an encrypted messaging app that opened up nearly 25 million messages about "industrial-scale". But to this day Finnane is regularly asked about the Skaf case, sometimes by strangers, at social functions and on other unexpected occasions. [6] These criminal organizations are mostly based around extended criminal clans. I continue to hold that view. The girls had no idea where they were and were obviously terrified. The commission of a crime that shocked the Lebanese, who numbered 70 to 90,000 between expatriates and descendants in the city. 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. meadowbrook country club estates; michael mullen obituary; pamela gluckin obituary new york; antonio tonyboy floirendo jr biography However, although these cases attracted some media attention while the trials were proceeding, they passed largely with little comment.'. COVID-19 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. This went on for some time and eventually Mohammed Skaf used a mobile phone to summon his brother Bilal. Authorities have stopped Australians and Australian-Lebanese dual nationals, including mothers with children, from leaving Lebanon. Mr Inbetween (2018-2021) TV-MA | 30 min | Crime, Drama 8.6 Rate this 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. Pluto Press, Annandale NSW. The four men in this other car all raped this unfortunate young girl, who was then hosed down until she was soaking wet and forced out of the car that she was in near the Catholic Club at Lidcombe. 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. 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. Terror in Sydney: The Unspeakable Crimes of Bilal Skaf's Lebanese Rape Gang (Crime Documentary) Finally, the rural areas of Sydney are home to small-time gangs who act as enforcers for the bigger gangs in the city. The first community of Lebanese in Australia were Maronite Christians, quickly followed by a large Muslim community. 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. 'Sexual intercourse without consent must be the worst crime after murder, because it involves a person invading the body of another, usually violently. While working as CEO of the Australian International Islamic College in Brisbane last year, he initiated a new program that saw problem students placed in a behavior-management room where they were closely supervised by an Islamic cleric. It was non-stop, he says. Michael Finnane, the judge who imposed that record sentence - which was later reduced after several appeals - was widely celebrated for his stance at the time. A GANG war over drug turf that has been simmering for two decades has erupted into a series of public shootings that has turned Fairfield in western Sydney into Australia's most dangerous suburb. 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. This large group of men got out of this van. If I opened up my lunchbox and pulled out a Lebanese roll, I would get hassled. Thats whats so disturbing., Lebanese-born educator Keysar Trad believes criminality in the community is a by-product of overly strict parents who expect their children to excel at school, and racism in the classroom and playground that prevents them from doing so. In my view, all of these men remain a continuing threat to the Sydney community and particularly to young women. Stephen Gibbs for Daily Mail Australia. 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. technology However, the victims' descriptions of the other men who attacked them were quite vague, as could be expected. Australian Lebanese families. Worldwide pandemic lockdowns have only made it easier for Lebanese expats to coordinate. Whatever they might have done in those centuries, the law is now perfectly clear - any woman is entitled to refuse consent to sexual intercourse at any time. The victim managed to break free and run across the park to a telephone box. 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. 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. 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. United States Russia Lebanon has a population of approximately 4.6 million, with 18 recognised distinct religious . It was important that I told the jury this because each of the girls had certainly agreed to get in the white van. Bilal Skaf was charged with every instance of forced sexual intercourse by anyone in the gang on the basis that he was an accessory before the fact to every crime and was just as responsible as the man who carried it out. Political overview. As a policy, multiculturalism was introduced by immigration minister Al . I cannot say what will happen to these men. These are questions that will probably never be answered. It is a common matter during the process of sentencing criminal offenders that their counsel would present psychological evidence, sometimes psychiatric evidence and other evidence to create as strong a subjective case for the offender as could be presented. and Lebanon were processed at a higher rate than the Australian-born in each of the five years. Perhaps the offenders did not believe any of the victims would ever tell the police. You do what you can.. France Without Bilal Skaf leading them, perhaps they will come to see that there is a way forward. The devastation in Beirut has profoundly touched Australias 250,000-strong Lebanese community. 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. These two girls did not expect to be driven over the Harbour Bridge. 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. What they were asked to decide was whether these three men, or any one of them, had committed the criminal offences with which they had been charged and they could only decide the accused had committed those offences, or any of them, if they were unanimously satisfied of that beyond reasonable doubt. If you ever hear him speak, you would never believe it. Vietnamese Organised Crime in Australia . 'It seemed clear to me that these men were sending out a message to the community in Sydney,' he writes. [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. Stephen Gibbs for Daily Mail Australia This was evidence of incriminating phone calls between him and Chami. Corona Much of that support is being directed virtually to a grassroots online fundraising drive based in London. At the end of the Crown case, the case against Skaf looked strong, but the case against Ghanem and Hajeid looked weak because of the identification problems. I wouldnt even put the request through to Canberra that the Lebanese government wanted direct funding, because it would go nowhere., That level of overt corruption is only too familiar for ordinary Lebanese, who blame government negligence and mismanagement for the devastating blast. 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. Skaf and the members of this gang clearly wanted public recognition for what they had done. In no sense were the members of this gang representing other Lebanese people. What made this trial startlingly different from most rape trials of which I was aware were four matters: 1. It was nearly midnight. The trial for these ofences was particularly horrifying. As the French president Emmanuel Macron toured the devastated scenes in Beirut on Thursday, a Lebanese woman could be heard urging the president to not give money to the corrupt government. Macron replied, I guarantee you, this aid will not go to corrupt hands.. In the face of such catastrophic ruin, the only option local residents had was to help. UAE They were an attack on society, but why? Each girl was questioned by the Crown prosecutor first and then cross-examined by each of the counsel for the accused. Lebanese mafia is a Colloquial term for organized crime groups which origin from Lebanon and Levant. All except Bilal Skaf are now out of jail. What is still difficult for me to understand is why this serious criminal conspiracy involving so many young men was launched. 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. 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. 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. USA He will remain a threat to the community. The Lebanese got a bad reputation after the 2000 Sydney gang rapes where 9 Lebanese-Australian youths gang raped several Anglo-Australian women in multiple attacks over the course of 2 months. In the third trial, the accused were Bilal Skaf, Mohammed Skaf, Mohammed Ghanem and Mahmoud Chami. 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. 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. The crime shocked the small town of Ashford and devastated the Australian South Sea Islander community of Elizabeth. Killing and shooting and illegal activity have become part of daily life. Expat families: 2.640 USD. 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. Culture The Triple Frontier, a tri-border area along the junction of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, is often used by Lebanese groups connected to political parties but also by Arab Mafia groups as a heaven for smuggling and money laundering. Those involved in these crimes committed them between 10 August and 30 August 2000 on three separate occasions. Her evidence was very powerful. A criminal trial commences with the Crown prosecutor calling evidence, after making a short opening address, then each of the accused in turn calls evidence in his case if he wishes to do so. Lebanon.. The protests inspired Lebanese abroad to get involved, prompting would-be activists to connect virtually and volunteer. I like Middle Eastern food. [7], Last edited on 24 February 2023, at 19:36, Learn how and when to remove these template messages, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Rising crime in northern Bekaa Valley hurting Hezbollah", "THE WORLD'S LARGEST DRUG FIELD -- (BY DENNIS EISENBERG) (Extension of Remarks - July 27, 1990)", "Schattenseiten der Einwanderergesellschaft - Brutale Familienbande", "Miri-Clan: Eine Familie, tief verstrickt ins Verbrechen - DIE WELT", "Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in the Tri-Border Area of South America", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lebanese_mafia&oldid=1141378811, This page was last edited on 24 February 2023, at 19:36. One upstanding group of Lebanese males got sentences up to 49 years prison for kidnapping girls on the street and raping them. When people have lost their homes and families, you dont think twice. 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. The people in the white van went through the city and stopped at a McDonald's in Stanmore. After being indecently assaulted on the train, she was then forced off the train and was taken up the steps of the Bankstown railway station. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. The first occurred from 1880 to 1947 when many Maronite, Melkite and Orthodox Christians migrated. Within these neighbourhoods lies the ravaged home of award-winning Lebanese-Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid. The main activities of Arab gangs in Australia are narcotics and weapons trafficking, extortion, prostitution, car theft and money laundering. In my time there, Australia gave millions [to aid efforts in Lebanon], he says, explaining that Australian funds are transferred directly through the head offices of UN agencies or humanitarian organisations. But with drive-by shootings, the nature of criminality in Sydney has changed. 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 . Many among Australia's Lebanese community trace their families' arrival back to the 1960s and 1970s, when the number of Lebanese-born residents tripled to 33,424. There are certainly criminal groups you could describe as Middle Eastern in origin but the lines are now blurring, he tells TIME. Bilal Skaf, however, elected to give evidence. In analogy with Australia, Arab organized crime also came to Germany following the Lebanese Civil War. To give you an idea of what to expect, here are some rent averages for the most popular cities in Australia. I was always hopeful that the people I sentenced in other cases might see the point of rehabilitation and, undoubtedly, some of them did. 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. National; Crime; How Skaf rape gang trapped their victims. 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. When I came to sentence Bilal Skaf, I sought submissions from his counsel who told me that he had a psychologist's report but was instructed by his client not to present it. Collins, J. The girls in the car were very concerned at this point, but too scared to get out and run away. 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. For the past decades the Arab crime families had controlled 78% of Germany's underworld activities. 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. But these days its worse. Lebanese mafia is a Colloquial term for organized crime groups which origin from Lebanon and Levant.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 Canada also in the Triple Frontier in South America. The identities of the men in the red van on 10 August have never been established. You just want more, Basha says. 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