politics The theft occurred in a tightly secured area, further reflecting the cash-strapped country's continued decay. He agreed that his client showed no remorse and no contrition. These are questions that will probably never be answered. I do not believe he will ever acknowledge the seriousness of what he did. United States 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. 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. 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. Luckily, a man came around the corner, saw her plight and approached her. 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. Lebanese mafia is a Colloquial term for organized crime groups which origin from Lebanon and Levant. Counsel for each of the other accused, as well as the Crown, then attacked Bilal Skaf in cross-examination, suggesting he was a liar. Apart from the three men I have indicated who were on trial, there was also in the car they were travelling in, which was a white van, a young man with an intellectual disability, fourteen years of age, who later pleaded guilty to a series of sexual assaults. The first found that Middle-Eastern Australians reported more discrimination compared with non-Middle-Eastern Australians. 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. 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. I cannot say what will happen to these men. Yet, the new gangland war fails to capture the imagination. 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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. I wont be packing up., For Melki, staying in Lebanon isnt simply about a place of residence, its about justice. The main center of Arab organized crime is Sydney, with a significant community of 120,000, followed by Melbourne. In no sense were the members of this gang representing other Lebanese people. Another four men were in a red van that followed the white van. Then another car arrived with the offenders Chami and two other men, one man known as Nike Sam. A large number of former Lebanese citizens immigrated to several major German cities under political asylum and refugee status. The evidence of the two girls was probably sufficient in its own right to identify Bilal Skaf because he had many conversations with them on the night and he left a condom full of his semen in the park where he and others sexually assaulted these two girls. 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. The crime was comparable to Lebanese gang rapes in Sydney. 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. 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 . God damn, you see one blonde person from Turkey or Lebanon and you think that there's pure whites in that country. There was another man, later identified as Y, who took part in the events on this night. By this time she was hysterical. Bilal Skaf raped her vaginally and another man, whom she could not identify, also raped her vaginally. 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 . 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. Average rent in Sydney. Latest news live broadcast Each of Ghanem and Hajeid's counsel put forward arguments that they had not been properly identified and were not present. 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. Finnane dealt with sadistic rapists before and after the Skaf cases. 3. However, the victims' descriptions of the other men who attacked them were quite vague, as could be expected. Average rent in Melbourne. Political news 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. Much of that support is being directed virtually to a grassroots online fundraising drive based in London. 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 aim of this study is to compare . It was important that I told the jury this because each of the girls had certainly agreed to get in the white van. Earlier we met Redfern-based Frank Hakim, the first major Lebanese criminal in Sydney, and younger men such as Louis Bayeh and Danny Karam. Manorama Online Lebanese-Christians have been immigrating to Australia for a very long time now and they have assimilated extremely well into Australian society. And these guys are well armed. trot Within these neighbourhoods lies the ravaged home of award-winning Lebanese-Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid. The available evidence suggests that Australians of Lebanese ethnicity who were born in Lebanon reportedly have higher rates of cardiovascular disease-related and type 2 diabetes-related complications when compared with the wider Australian population. 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). Without Bilal Skaf leading them, perhaps they will come to see that there is a way forward. investment It is also possible that there were other victims who have never come forward. Restaurateurs in Bankstown pay up to $50,000 a year in protection money or risk having their premises firebombed, while Shia and Sunni Muslims exchange invectives and blows on the streets. You just want more, Basha says. Learn how your comment data is processed. This means that many other gangs of boys are doing the same crimes. None generated anything like the public attention these trials drew. 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 gang also crash-tackled, punched and kicked these girls and stole items of jewellery that they had on them. Thus, the Crown Prosecutor and the counsel for Hajeid and Ghanem joined forces to attack Bilal Skaf. 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. One of the dead was Sarkis Abboud, 61 years old, and the second was his friend, Tony Yazbek, two years younger. 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. J., Noble, G. Poynting, S. and Tabar, P. (2000) Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime. . I was lucky; I got a second chance. [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. 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. 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. The passion is there and so is the willingness to help, Rebecca Maakasa, a 23-year-old Melburnian, says. 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? A number of the men penetrated her vagina with their fingers. I considered that I should say these words because it was important that the jury and anyone listening to the trial, including the accused, have a full realisation that a woman has to do nothing more than refuse consent. Political overview. 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.. But when I was older and more Lebanese kids moved to my area, we formed a gang so we could protect each other and I started bullying back. 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. Skaf was a small man, rather thin, with black hair and a sharp face. The police arrested the perpetrator of the crime as she climbed to the tram, after people called who reported a woman with blood. 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. 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. newspaper 4. 'All of them were examples of depravity and cruelty. Indeed, when he was being taken away after I imposed sentence on him, he turned to me and said, 'And I am innocent, you c***t!' At the time, Mohammed Skaf was still a schoolboy and attended the same school as the victim, to whom he was known as 'Sam'. A 44-year-old woman killed two Lebanese residing in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria in the southeast of Australia. 'What the Skaf gang did was to enable multiple men to defile and degrade four young women. 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. 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. 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. 'Sexual intercourse without consent must be the worst crime after murder, because it involves a person invading the body of another, usually violently. Following this, the Crown prosecutor made a closing address dealing with all aspects of the case and putting forward arguments as to why there should be convictions in each case. 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