The gang assaulted the two girls, by punching and kicking them and, of course, by dragging them across a park by the neck. Many of the rapists have never been identified and police fear there were more victims who did not come forward. He agreed that his client showed no remorse and no contrition. His demeanour in the court room said that. 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. Breaking news 34. I thought she was a particularly brave young woman who refused to give in to any of these suggestions. 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. 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. Koreans, growing numbers of Indians, and on the Lakemba side lots of Lebanese and other Arabs. I cannot recall any other evidence being presented by him or on his behalf. The girls had no idea where they were and were obviously terrified. TV Luckily, a man came around the corner, saw her plight and approached her. By 2016, the year of Australia . This surprising evidence was used by the Crown to bolster its case about identification. Of these, 52.5 per cent were males and 47.5 per cent were females. The Ryan-inspired OCR had just six crimes. The identity of the four men in the red van has never properly been revealed. Single expats: 1.773 USD. Id punch any Aussie kid who even looked at me., (MORE:Circle Sentencing: Alternative Justice in Australia). 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. A lot of the racism against Lebanese people in Australia however dates to before 9/11. Stars: Travis Fimmel, Jemmason Power, Talijah Blackman-Corowa, Eden Cassady Votes: 2,921 3. 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. It seemed clear to me that these men were sending out a message to the community in Sydney. My views on sentence were not those of the judges of the Court of Criminal Appeal, but their sentences prevail. 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. 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. But material losses, even huge painful ones, are things that one day can be replaced. All three men put pressure on her to agree to have sex with them but she refused. They made very little attempt to cover their tracks. Not one of them showed that fear of criminal proceedings or of jail was ever in their minds. Since then, migration has significantly reduced and growth rates have become steady. Although Lebanese are to be found throughout Australia . In my view, all of these men remain a continuing threat to the Sydney community and particularly to young women. Praying for the injured, missing & dead, she wrote on Twitter. 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 . When people have lost their homes and families, you dont think twice. 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. I have no intention of attempting to justify my sentences. Why did those who joined him, become involved? 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. Another curious feature in the trial was Skaf's bold assertion that he was a man of good character. #23. The . The sheer scale of it, and that it sounds like it was completely avoidable. Those who pleaded guilty, were given lesser sentences than those who pleaded not guilty, because the law provided for this. America Both of the Skafs were convicted. Sports Finally, the rural areas of Sydney are home to small-time gangs who act as enforcers for the bigger gangs in the city. The gang also crash-tackled, punched and kicked these girls and stole items of jewellery that they had on them. Factors such as unemployment, education, socio-economic disadvantage and lack of access to services have more bearing than ethnicity on crime rates. health This is probably Katter's most famous and funny video, wait until the end. Video 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. The devastation in Beirut has profoundly touched Australias 250,000-strong Lebanese community. 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 . I cannot say what will happen to these men. These are questions that will probably never be answered. He later pleaded guilty to some of the offences and when he did, I directed that he not be identified by his name. Bilal Skaf was one of the people who then approached the victim whom he grabbed by the hair. They had hardly ever been over the Harbour Bridge and were quite concerned when that happened. According to the NSW Police, Lebanese crime families have started to corner the market on drug-dealing, causing them to clash with other gangs in the city. Skaf was talking on a mobile phone to other people in Arabic. None of these young women will ever forget their experience at the hands of this gang.'. We started with 10-12 members, now we have 160 members and so many volunteering requests, Abbas says, adding that the membership has spread to diaspora communities in numerous countries, including Australia. Football By this time she was hysterical. 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. Average rent in Melbourne. id send all the ones in Australia back to lebanon and then drop a bomb. Mr Inbetween (2018-2021) TV-MA | 30 min | Crime, Drama 8.6 Rate this He acted throughout the trial as someone who wanted to be noticed. Terror in Sydney: The Unspeakable Crimes of Bilal Skaf's Lebanese Rape Gang (Crime Documentary) Those involved in these crimes committed them between 10 August and 30 August 2000 on three separate occasions. This went on for some time and eventually Mohammed Skaf used a mobile phone to summon his brother Bilal. What was it that caused Bilal Skaf to carefully plan this series of attacks on young women in Sydney? Finnnane sentenced Bilal Skaf to a maximum sentence of 55 years in prison with a minimum term of 40 years. I remanded all of them in custody. 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. If you ever hear him speak, you would never believe it. 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. None generated anything like the public attention these trials drew. Glass was blown out blown out with such a high velocity that there are shards of glass embedded in some of my furniture, almost dagger-like, she says. [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. Skaf and the other two men made their acquaintance by speaking to them politely in the shopping centre. The closest thing to non-white allies we have is . In Germany these clans mostly settled in Berlin, Bremen and Essen where they became involved in narcotics trafficking, weapons trafficking, extortion, prostitution, illegal gambling, car theft, money laundering and armed robbery. ShiaChat.com may be unavailable periodically Saturday night to Sunday evening while we migrate to new servers and perform some necessary updates. 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. Im Lebanese Australian and Im proud of both parts of my identity. 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. He extended his criminal activities and eventually became known as "the Lebanese . Impact Lebanon has raised over 5m (A$9m) since it launched its disaster-relief fundraiser immediately after the blast. That was an attraction, too. Criminal organizations however often transcend religious and cultural barriers, with members of the Sunni communities all involved in the same criminal organizations.[3]. There was no application that I should do otherwise. Lebanese Crime, Official Cowardice In Australia. It was nearly midnight. With Lebanons economy in tatters, led by a government widely accused of corruption, international donors and diaspora networks are the only hope for desperate Beirutis facing a food shortage and lack of shelter. We tried setting it up once but it didnt work, says Don Weatherburn, director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Lebanese people have become integrated the most in Australian society. And those six included domestic violence, random breath testing, theft, robbery, assaults and motor vehicle theft - no drugs, organised crime, firearms, shootings, attempted murders or homicides. Bilal Skaf again had vaginal sex with her. I then had to give them quite complex directions about the facts in the trial and the law, which has its complexities. The young girl who was the victim of these rapes could identify Mohammed Skaf, whom she knew well. These two girls did not expect to be driven over the Harbour Bridge. My understanding was that the relevant agencies would report back to Australia, either through our UN office in Geneva or New York, how they spent that money, and the government would see that as being accountable to the Australian taxpayer, he says. Result: gun crime in western Sydney and northern Melbourne often involves Lebanese Australians, as we saw with the murder last month of Hamad Assaad, himself a suspected hitman. 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 . In the third trial, the accused were Bilal Skaf, Mohammed Skaf, Mohammed Ghanem and Mahmoud Chami. rancho bernardo country club membership cost; About. What we know about the Beirut explosion video explainer, caused by the unsafe storage of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, anti-government protests in Lebanon in October 2019, president Emmanuel Macron toured the devastated scenes. 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. Skaf did all the talking and suggested a trip in a car and puffing some marijuana. However, these crimes were of secondary importance. The passion is there and so is the willingness to help, Rebecca Maakasa, a 23-year-old Melburnian, says. Called next to him in the front seat, but she indicated that there was no evidence of his involvement in the crime, but only wanted him as a witness to it. United States When they got into the white van, the two girls discovered the presence of the other two men. 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 girls in the car were very concerned at this point, but too scared to get out and run away. 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 . That sentence was modified several times upon appeal. But to this day Finnane is regularly asked about the Skaf case, sometimes by strangers, at social functions and on other unexpected occasions. The first occurred from 1880 to 1947 when many Maronite, Melkite and Orthodox Christians migrated. Fortunately she wasnt home at the time. 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