The protests inspired Lebanese abroad to get involved, prompting would-be activists to connect virtually and volunteer. The existence of criminal activity among these communities is not the issue. Political overview. But below the surface of this lower-middle class success story is a Middle Eastern ghetto terrorized by members of its community. 'It seemed clear to me that these men were sending out a message to the community in Sydney,' he writes. 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. 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. By KAREEM CHEHAYEB February 27, 2023. The first found that Middle-Eastern Australians reported more discrimination compared with non-Middle-Eastern Australians. , updated Lebanese families across generations in both rural and urban areas, including changes over time in occupations, education, religion, community activities and family values. Its just a mess. Abouzeid was in Melbourne at the time of the blast, relying on relatives to send photos of the destruction. This went on for some time and eventually Mohammed Skaf used a mobile phone to summon his brother Bilal. Arab world Then it was reported from the police, that its investigators were trying to find a driver, who they believe transported the appellant from Brunswick, where the crime was committed, to the Carlton North area, where she was arrested, and said that he was wearing a dark-colored jacket with boxes in the back seat of his car, in addition to a breathing tube. It is often difficult to predict whether there will be rehabilitation. 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. The Ryan-inspired OCR had just six crimes. 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. However, Bilal Skaf and the other actual rapist had never met her before. Frequently, whilst sitting in the dock, he clicked his fingers towards his counsel, summoning him over. I hope that those who have been released do rehabilitate or, at the very least, that they do not re-offend. Perhaps the offenders did not believe any of the victims would ever tell the police. 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. It was about 9pm at this stage. All three men put pressure on her to agree to have sex with them but she refused. Sports However, although these cases attracted some media attention while the trials were proceeding, they passed largely with little comment.'. 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. I gave that consent. 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. He agreed that his client showed no remorse and no contrition. USA The passion is there and so is the willingness to help, Rebecca Maakasa, a 23-year-old Melburnian, says. Indictable offenses are heard in a superior court in the presences of a jury. It was nearly midnight. After they were raped, the victims were just abandoned. 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. 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. Relatives have legally . The Pursuit of Justice, published by New Holland Publishers, RRP $35, is available from all good book retailers or online at New Holland Publishers. During her ordeal the woman was called an 'Aussie pig', told she was going to get it 'Leb-style' and asked if 'Leb c*** tasted better than Aussie c***'. 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. Ukraine At no point, however, did he identify the men in the red van. Ghanem's convictions for his participation in the attacks that were the subject of the first trial, however, were confirmed. Skaf did all the talking and suggested a trip in a car and puffing some marijuana. That sentence was modified several times upon appeal. When they got into the white van, the two girls discovered the presence of the other two men. The main center of Arab organized crime is Sydney, with a significant community of 120,000, followed by Melbourne. Average rent in Sydney. Finnane has compared the Skaf gang's depravity to outrages committed by invading armies in times of war. Video Deputy Commissioner for Investigations and Counter Terrorism Dave Hudson.Daniel Munoz Political news New South Wales (NSW) state police have arrested 31 people, including three teenagers, after a turf war between two prominent drug gangs [File: David Gray/Reuters] By Ian Lloyd Neubauer. Mohammed Skaf was charged, like his brother Bilal, with two counts of sexual intercourse without consent because he had arranged for the girl to be made available to his brother and others to have sexual intercourse with the victim. In Australia crimes are legally classified as either indictable or non-indictable. 33. 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. 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. 'Sexual intercourse without consent must be the worst crime after murder, because it involves a person invading the body of another, usually violently. So that putting a penis in the mouth of a woman, in law, was sexual intercourse. His attitude was the same throughout the trial. 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". The complainant, who had been sexually assaulted by fourteen men something like forty times over four hours, could not identify him. The men in the red van also sexually assaulted them in the same fashion, as well as punching them and kicking them. 5 Brian Lipscomb 'Many of the victims, I am sure, will be affected by these crimes for the whole of their lives. 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. They could not suggest the girls consented to sexual intercourse because they claimed not to have been there. Without Bilal Skaf leading them, perhaps they will come to see that there is a way forward. Rania Abouzeids apartment in Beirut, close to the blast site. The complainants clearly identified Skaf, whose counsel suggested to each complainant that she had consented to having sexual intercourse with him. Stephen Gibbs for Daily Mail Australia Bilal Skaf was one of the people who then approached the victim whom he grabbed by the hair. Before we can solve it we need to understand it, he says, and Im not sure we do.. By this time she was hysterical. Finnnane sentenced Bilal Skaf to a maximum sentence of 55 years in prison with a minimum term of 40 years. Those involved in these crimes committed them between 10 August and 30 August 2000 on three separate occasions. They also robbed the girls. The former ambassador is no stranger to Lebanese corruption, having fielded astonishing requests from Lebanese officials in his time there seeking Australian aid money for self-fulfilling purposes. In the face of such catastrophic ruin, the only option local residents had was to help. 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. 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. I will clean up, I will repair what I can repair, and then Ill live there. For example, I had to explain that sexual intercourse was not, as many people might think, only penetration of the vagina of a woman by the penis of a man, but extended to penetration of any part of the body of a person by any part of the body of another. Taxpayers can be assured their money wont end up in the pockets of corrupt officials, according to Lex Bartlem, who served as Australian ambassador to Beirut between 2010 and 2014. This was a criminal conspiracy involving two groups of men, that was carefully coordinated by mobile phones. He writes that one suggested if sentences as large as that imposed on Bilal Skaf were allowed to stand rapists would in future murder their victims. A large number of former Lebanese citizens immigrated to several major German cities under political asylum and refugee status. Expat families: 2.640 USD. . Finally, the rural areas of Sydney are home to small-time gangs who act as enforcers for the bigger gangs in the city. This large group of men got out of this van. From the outset, the City of Bankstown in south-western Sydneys sprawling migrant belt is a picture of multiculturalism. politics Collins, J. Australian society and government were mostly doing this until Bowen's speech. [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. Frank Hakim, who emigrated to Australia at the age of 20 or so, was the first prominent Lebanese criminal. Single expats: 1.773 USD. 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. He later pleaded guilty to some of the offences and when he did, I directed that he not be identified by his name. 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. 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. 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. 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. Europe But to this day Finnane is regularly asked about the Skaf case, sometimes by strangers, at social functions and on other unexpected occasions. There are certainly criminal groups you could describe as Middle Eastern in origin but the lines are now blurring, he tells TIME. Id punch any Aussie kid who even looked at me., (MORE:Circle Sentencing: Alternative Justice in Australia). 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 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. When he gave evidence, Bilal Skaf was cocky in his manner and almost contemptuous of the Crown prosecutor. However, when the van finally stopped, it was at a park in Greenacre. 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. They were followed by other groups of criminals of Lebanese descent, many of whom, in contrast to their predecessors, preferred to remain in the part of Sydney where Keep Reading Tri Minh Tran The identities of the men in the red van on 10 August have never been established. 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 wont be packing up., For Melki, staying in Lebanon isnt simply about a place of residence, its about justice. Lebanese Crime, Official Cowardice In Australia. All except Bilal Skaf are now out of jail. 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 other two were also fairly small, but with the sorts of faces that could easily be forgotten. 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. [6] These criminal organizations are mostly based around extended criminal clans. It was obviously carefully planned and skilfully executed. The crime was comparable to Lebanese gang rapes in Sydney. But these days its worse. 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. In the mid-1960s he obtained the protection of Lennie McPherson and proceeded to provide protection himself to Lebanese and other ethnic gaming clubs. Much of that support is being directed virtually to a grassroots online fundraising drive based in London. Skaf was a small man, rather thin, with black hair and a sharp face. 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