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. 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. Migrants are, on the whole, far less likely to commit serious crimes than the Australian born population; A small number of migrant groups defy this trend and have higher rates of crime; When asking why some groups have higher rates of crime we cannot simply equate criminality with the culture. However, data also suggests that the city has been experiencing a steady rise in crime rates for the past three years. COVID-19 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. 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. Relatives have legally . Without Bilal Skaf leading them, perhaps they will come to see that there is a way forward. 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. Compared to the Arab population in Australia, a much larger number of Arabs are in Germany and have traditionally settled in large numbers in Lebanese regions such as Tripoli, the Beqaa Valley and Beirut where they have integral part of the country's Sunni community. 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 no point, however, did he identify the men in the red van. 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. The gang also crash-tackled, punched and kicked these girls and stole items of jewellery that they had on them. Rania Abouzeids apartment in Beirut, close to the blast site. An estimate of the total Lebanese population in Australia, consisting of Lebanese-born and their descendants, is approaching 250,000. 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. 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. Ive been a journalist for 20 years and Ive covered some really tough stories, Im no stranger to these sorts of violent upheavals, but this one feels different, Abouzeid says. The last person to plead guilty was a friend of Mohammed Skaf. He agreed that his client showed no remorse and no contrition. The existence of criminal activity among these communities is not the issue. But with drive-by shootings, the nature of criminality in Sydney has changed. 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Lebanese Australians (Arabic: , French: australiens libanaise) refers to citizens or permanent residents of Australia of Lebanese ancestry. 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. 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. When they got into the white van, the two girls discovered the presence of the other two men. After they were raped, the victims were just abandoned. UAE Hamzy, 44, was gunned down in the . 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. Australia enjoys friendly bilateral relations with Lebanon, underpinned by strong people-to-people links. The press was also prevented from providing any likenesses or descriptions of the accused or their racial origins. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has said the government of Malcolm Fraser made a mistake in bringing Lebanese refugees to Australia in the 1970s, saying they formed a majority of . 11:06 EST 27 May 2018 Will this be the catalyst that prompts the move home? France What made this trial startlingly different from most rape trials of which I was aware were four matters: 1. 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 Pursuit of Justice, published by New Holland Publishers, RRP $35, is available from all good book retailers or online at New Holland Publishers. The men in the red van also sexually assaulted them in the same fashion, as well as punching them and kicking them. But below the surface of this lower-middle class success story is a Middle Eastern ghetto terrorized by members of its community. 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. 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.. By This also caused these girls great concern. 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. I consider my sentences imposed on the members of this gang were warranted. 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. 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. 34. It was because the police had given up fighting back. I do not believe he will ever acknowledge the seriousness of what he did. Not one of them showed that fear of criminal proceedings or of jail was ever in their minds. [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. When people have lost their homes and families, you dont think twice. It is also possible that there were other victims who have never come forward. There was no doubt in my mind that when Chami and Hajeid arrived, they both knew that this unfortunate young woman had already been raped in the toilets at Bankstown and in a car in the car park at the Bankstown Trotting Club. ShiaChat.com may be unavailable periodically Saturday night to Sunday evening while we migrate to new servers and perform some necessary updates. 18:49 EST 27 May 2018. However, although these cases attracted some media attention while the trials were proceeding, they passed largely with little comment.'. Pluto Press, Annandale NSW. 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. Russia 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. Factors such as unemployment, education, socio-economic disadvantage and lack of access to services have more bearing than ethnicity on crime rates. Bourse The trial for these ofences was particularly horrifying. 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. 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". This was evidence of incriminating phone calls between him and Chami. This meant that the Crown could seek my consent to cross-examine him to show that he was a man of bad character. The complainants clearly identified Skaf, whose counsel suggested to each complainant that she had consented to having sexual intercourse with him. 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. Trad thinks the problem can be nipped in the bud by changing the way schools deal with Lebanese delinquents. There was another man, later identified as Y, who took part in the events on this night. The main activities of Arab gangs in Australia are narcotics and weapons trafficking, extortion, prostitution, car theft and money laundering. 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. 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. 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. 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