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. The evidence showed Mohammed Skaf to be a treacherous bully who betrayed the trust of the victim and made her, a sixteen-year old school girl, available to his brother and ten or eleven other men. 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. A 44-year-old woman killed two Lebanese residing in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria in the southeast of Australia. 'I have thought of this over the years,' Finane writes. Finnane has compared the Skaf gang's depravity to outrages committed by invading armies in times of war. From 1880 to the 1920s, mainly Maronite, Melkite and Orthodox Christians arrived on a small scale. 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'Sexual intercourse without consent must be the worst crime after murder, because it involves a person invading the body of another, usually violently. From the outset, the City of Bankstown in south-western Sydneys sprawling migrant belt is a picture of multiculturalism. The . 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). By KAREEM CHEHAYEB February 27, 2023. Football It seemed clear to me that these men were sending out a message to the community in Sydney. 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. Bilal Skaf sat throughout the sentencing process looking as if he could not care less about any of it. They are also willing to purchase from Chinese importers and to wholesale to other groups, such as Romanian and Lebanese dealers. Political overview. All except Bilal Skaf are now out of jail. 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. At first they resisted, but we made them believe that respect is something every child deserves, but that they needed to take action to earn that respect, he says. 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. 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. from When they obliged, he crushed the foam cups and spread the debris onto the court floor. 'Each sentence was framed so that there could be some hope of release but, in my mind, the protection of the community was more important than early release. 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). investment rancho bernardo country club membership cost; About. COVID-19 After finishing school, Basha became involved in more serious crimes. Australian Lebanese families. This also caused these girls great concern. In this next car, the victim was repeatedly indecently assaulted, threatened with death when something that looked like a gun was held to her head and raped vaginally three times and orally five times. They also robbed the girls. However, the victims' descriptions of the other men who attacked them were quite vague, as could be expected. 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. The gang's ringleader, Skaf, denied his role in the crimes despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt and showed no remorse even after he was sentenced to 55 years in prison. The local people were all blown up and the tragic end was released | International | Sanli News Network SETN.COM, Eleven-year-old Georgia wins on The Voice Kids. Lebanese Crime, Official Cowardice In Australia. 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. Praying for the injured, missing & dead, she wrote on Twitter. The sheer scale of it, and that it sounds like it was completely avoidable. I continue to hold that view. In this case, only Bilal Skaf gave evidence. Drive-bys were virtually unheard of in Sydney until the mid-1990s, when the sons and grandsons of hardworking Lebanese migrants emerged as serious players in a world of organized crime, hitherto dominated by Vietnamese and Calabrian gangs. She was able to identify Bilal Skaf because he made a point of shoving his face close to hers and saying, 'I'm Sam's brother, Sam.'. None of these young women will ever forget their experience at the hands of this gang.'. It is a crime that assaults human dignity. 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 Pursuit of Justice, published by New Holland Publishers, RRP $35, is available from all good book retailers or online at New Holland Publishers. 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. If these men, who are all still young, take notice of their brothers, sisters and cousins, they will settle down to a normal life and the criminal justice system will not see them again. This means that many other gangs of boys are doing the same crimes. That concern was also reflected in the Australian governments own pledge of $2m this week, with foreign minister Marise Payne announcing the money would be evenly split between the UN World Food Programme and the Lebanese Red Cross. Yet, the new gangland war fails to capture the imagination. I consider my sentences imposed on the members of this gang were warranted. Crime families exchange gunfire and trade narcotics with apparent immunity; arrestees in Bankstown are 60 times more likely to use heroin than those in other parts in Australia. Much of that support is being directed virtually to a grassroots online fundraising drive based in London. The worst part was that these filthy criminals were in prison and the rapes kept happening. There were others who have never been brought to trial. 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. I like Middle Eastern people. In the 1980s . Those who pleaded guilty, were given lesser sentences than those who pleaded not guilty, because the law provided for this. At the time, Mohammed Skaf was still a schoolboy and attended the same school as the victim, to whom he was known as 'Sam'. Horrific scenes of carnage on 4 August have given way to an enormous display of humanitys strength, strangers shoulder to shoulder beginning the daunting task of renewal. The people in the white van went through the city and stopped at a McDonald's in Stanmore. The victim managed to break free and run across the park to a telephone box. There was no evidence that any offences were committed because of religious or cultural or racial reasons and, in fact, there had been no mention of religion at any time in the trial. A lot of the racism against Lebanese people in Australia however dates to before 9/11. I was lucky; I got a second chance. Some experienced criminal lawyers also expressed disagreements with Finnane's sentences, claiming he had no regard to the Skaf brothers' rehabilitation. 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. Shimbiris VIP This went on for some time and eventually Mohammed Skaf used a mobile phone to summon his brother Bilal. The geographic heartland of Australias 100,000-strong Lebanese community, its red brick apartments and cement-sheet homes are peppered with mosques, musallas and churches. But to this day Finnane is regularly asked about the Skaf case, sometimes by strangers, at social functions and on other unexpected occasions. 4. 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. You do what you can.. And given the history of government efforts to obtain information on race, Im not even sure its something we should be doing. It came as a surprise to me that nothing was going to be presented to me by counsel for Bilal Skaf. Skaf did all the talking and suggested a trip in a car and puffing some marijuana. 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. 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. Factors such as unemployment, education, socio-economic disadvantage and lack of access to services have more bearing than ethnicity on crime rates. It was obviously carefully planned and skilfully executed. I remanded all of them in custody. 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. 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. Expat families: 2.640 USD. . Frequently, whilst sitting in the dock, he clicked his fingers towards his counsel, summoning him over. Those accompanying Bilal Skaf on 12 August, perhaps ten, perhaps eleven men, have not been brought to trial and many of those involved in the horrific spate of sexual assaults on 30 August 2000 have not been brought to trial. The Lebanese-born population of Australia stood at 70,325 persons in the 1996 census. Id punch any Aussie kid who even looked at me., (MORE:Circle Sentencing: Alternative Justice in Australia). They were classified as a Turk due to Lebanon being a province of the Ottoman Empire at that time. The girls in the car were very concerned at this point, but too scared to get out and run away. While Lebanese settled all over Australia, the majority have consistently settled in NSW and particularly in Sydney. trot The population is diverse, having a large Christian religious base, being mostly Maronite Catholics, while also having a large Muslim group of Sunni branch of Islam.. Lebanon, in both its modern-day form as the Lebanese state . Skaf, through his counsel, suggested the two girls consented to everything that happened but that, of course, had difficulties since he not only sexually assaulted these girls, but those in the gang, including him, assaulted them and robbed them of their jewellery, their watches, their mobile phones and their money. Coronavirus Rebecca Maakasa, confined in Melbournes lockdown, is connecting through social media to the Lebanese diaspora to offer whatever assistance she can, Its like an apocalyptic world, Sydney-born Yasmin Kassis describes. However, when the van finally stopped, it was at a park in Greenacre. Skaf and the members of this gang clearly wanted public recognition for what they had done. However, these crimes were of secondary importance. Once Lebanese kids gets involved in gangs, theyre killed or in prison before they get a chance to grow up., There is no data available on the prevalence of criminality in Sydneys Lebanese community because people who are arrested are not legally required to give information on their ethnicity or heritage. 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. Rania Abouzeids apartment in Beirut, close to the blast site. After they were raped, the victims were just abandoned. The commission of a crime that shocked the Lebanese, who numbered 70 to 90,000 between expatriates and descendants in the city. Women's rights activists had long demanded that Article . 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. 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. Dec 13, 2005. [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. This was also the position for the assaults and the robberies committed on the two victims. 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. Political news One of Australia's most redneck outback parliamentarians, Bob Katter, is the descendant of Lebanese immigrants. The largest proportion of the Lebanese community in Australia, whether it includes those who were born overseas or also those who claim Lebanese ancestry, now lives . 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. 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. What was it that caused Bilal Skaf to carefully plan this series of attacks on young women in Sydney? A mobile phone was then used by someone in this group to secure the attendance of another group who arrived in a car. Unidentified thieves broke into the headquarters of Lebanon's state news agency and stole a server containing its photo archive, officials say. The 1995 NSW Legislative Council standing committee on social issues reported that while Lebanese-Australian youth comprise 0.9% of . 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. 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 . The first community of Lebanese in Australia were Maronite Christians, quickly followed by a large Muslim community. It was because the police had given up fighting back. 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. To the streets, thats where., Australian-Lebanese filmmaker George Basha agrees. 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. Before we can solve it we need to understand it, he says, and Im not sure we do.. When the victim went to get into the car, however, she saw two other men there whom she did not know and did not expect would be there. Why did the gang first of all go to a shopping centre at Chatswood? For Melbourne-born Alia Melki, that urge to help hit her as immediately as the blast itself. I cannot say what will happen to these men. The two girls were then abandoned in the middle of the night in an area they did not know and forced to humiliate themselves by seeking assistance at around midnight from two people who were returning home from a social event. 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