This means that many other gangs of boys are doing the same crimes. One of the dead was Sarkis Abboud, 61 years old, and the second was his friend, Tony Yazbek, two years younger. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. sport 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 . In my view, all of these men remain a continuing threat to the Sydney community and particularly to young women. (2001) The Lebanese . 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 merely imposed sentences on a number of offenders. Africa ', Then Labor premier Bob Carr has said of the original 55-year sentence: 'It was certainly a headline grabber, it met community expectations, it sent a powerful message to any punk with violent tendencies on the margins of gang activity that this was very dangerous behaviour.'. Praying for the injured, missing & dead, she wrote on Twitter. In the third trial, the accused were Bilal Skaf, Mohammed Skaf, Mohammed Ghanem and Mahmoud Chami. Skaf was a small man, rather thin, with black hair and a sharp face. Finnane dealt with sadistic rapists before and after the Skaf cases. Much of that support is being directed virtually to a grassroots online fundraising drive based in London. The . The main activities of Arab gangs in Australia are narcotics and weapons trafficking, extortion, prostitution, car theft and money laundering. 3. The girl was just sixteen years old. The police arrested the perpetrator of the crime as she climbed to the tram, after people called who reported a woman with blood. from 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. She was also raped vaginally by another man who also forced oral sex on her. 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. What was it that caused Bilal Skaf to carefully plan this series of attacks on young women in Sydney? A 44-year-old woman killed two Lebanese residing in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria in the southeast of Australia. 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. Crimes under Lebanese laws may not be considered offences in Australia. And you, have you seen the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the sky of Barn? This trial concluded on 11 July 2002 and concerned events of 12 August 2000, only two nights after the attacks on the two girls from Chatswood. He did not believe he would be caught. Then another car arrived with the offenders Chami and two other men, one man known as Nike Sam. The worst part was that these filthy criminals were in prison and the rapes kept happening. 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. The largest wave of migration from Lebanon occurred between 1976 and 1981 during the Lebanese Civil War. 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. Before we can solve it we need to understand it, he says, and Im not sure we do.. 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. Im Lebanese Australian and Im proud of both parts of my identity. Police Recorded Incidents and Hate Crime: Australia 105 Police Recorded Incidents and Hate Crime Overseas 106 Immigrants as victims of crime 109 Bias in the Criminal Justice System 112 . The crime shocked the small town of Ashford and devastated the Australian South Sea Islander community of Elizabeth. 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 This is probably Katter's most famous and funny video, wait until the end. 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. Mr Inbetween (2018-2021) TV-MA | 30 min | Crime, Drama 8.6 Rate this 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. 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.. The children of refugees who fled Lebanon's civil war for peaceful Australia in the 1970s form a. majority of Australian militants fighting in the Middle East, according to about a dozen counter-terrorism officials, security experts and Muslim community members. Knowing this much corruption gives me more reason not to leave Lebanon. It is across the street from the Lebanese central bank in Beirut, the Associated Press reported. I like Middle Eastern food. 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. This was a criminal conspiracy involving two groups of men, that was carefully coordinated by mobile phones. 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. They made very little attempt to cover their tracks. Lebanese move to west Africa, escaping the crisis at home A new wave of migrants has come looking for jobs Jun 10th 2021 W HEN BANKS started to fail and protesters began filling the streets in. SYDNEY (Reuters) - The children of refugees who fled Lebanon's civil war for peaceful Australia in the 1970s form a majority of Australian militants fighting in the Middle East, according to. Id punch any Aussie kid who even looked at me., (MORE:Circle Sentencing: Alternative Justice in Australia). 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. To my mind, the community deserved to be protected from Bilal Skaf for many years. These two girls did not expect to be driven over the Harbour Bridge. 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. The girls in the car were very concerned at this point, but too scared to get out and run away. they deserve nothing less and we'd be making the world a better place. The 1995 NSW Legislative Council standing committee on social issues reported that while Lebanese-Australian youth comprise 0.9% of . Australian society and government were mostly doing this until Bowen's speech. Lebanese Migration to Australia There have been three main waves of immigration from Lebanon to Australia. I live in the hyphen between those two identities, Abouzeid says, now en route to Beirut to salvage her home. Sexual intercourse without consent was the principal crime contemplated and committed. Many months later he pleaded guilty to a series of sexual offences that included the events of this night. Earlier we met Redfern-based Frank Hakim, the first major Lebanese criminal in Sydney, and younger men such as Louis Bayeh and Danny Karam. #23. Murder was not in his mind; terrifying people generally was.'. A mobile phone was then used by someone in this group to secure the attendance of another group who arrived in a car. 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. Australia In Sydney, Disaffected Lebanese Kids Caught in Spiraling Gang Violence Facing racism at school and pressure at home, children from Middle Eastern families in Australia are dragged. Why did those who joined him, become involved? The crime was comparable to Lebanese gang rapes in Sydney. I cannot say what will happen to these men. France 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.'. You just want more, Basha says. In the face of such catastrophic ruin, the only option local residents had was to help. The victim managed to break free and run across the park to a telephone box. 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? 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. Single expats: 1.630 USD. He later pleaded guilty to some of the offences and when he did, I directed that he not be identified by his name. Melbourne experiences a moderate crime rate and is generally considered a safe city for living and travelling. Lebanese organized crime syndicates generally are active . Ukraine 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. Bilal Skaf was one of the people who then approached the victim whom he grabbed by the hair. Religious law has the same standing as civil law, which incorporates family law, marriage, divorce and custody. They could not suggest the girls consented to sexual intercourse because they claimed not to have been there. 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. I wont be packing up., For Melki, staying in Lebanon isnt simply about a place of residence, its about justice. The girls had no idea where they were and were obviously terrified. 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. Average rent in Melbourne. 'These were not random attacks and, in my view, they were aimed at creating terror in the community. There were other standard instructions thenthe trial began. "(Ghazal) said on the show that if he . Sports 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. Lebanese mafia is a Colloquial term for organized crime groups which origin from Lebanon and Levant. Present governor of the State of NSW is a distinguished Lebanese-Christian woman. Will this be the catalyst that prompts the move home? We are no longer accepting comments on this article. 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. At the time, Mohammed Skaf was still a schoolboy and attended the same school as the victim, to whom he was known as 'Sam'. The closest thing to non-white allies we have is . I was always hopeful that the people I sentenced in other cases might see the point of rehabilitation and, undoubtedly, some of them did. . But the central bank, Banque du Liban, led by former Merrill Lynch banker Riad Salameh . [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. If I opened up my lunchbox and pulled out a Lebanese roll, I would get hassled. 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. She was then dumped at a train station after being hosed down. 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. Shimbiris VIP Lebanese Australians (Arabic: , French: australiens libanaise) refers to citizens or permanent residents of Australia of Lebanese ancestry. Frank Hakim, who emigrated to Australia at the age of 20 or so, was the first prominent Lebanese criminal. Each of Ghanem and Hajeid's counsel put forward arguments that they had not been properly identified and were not present. But material losses, even huge painful ones, are things that one day can be replaced. 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