But these days its worse. It was about 9pm at this stage. Skaf and the other two men made their acquaintance by speaking to them politely in the shopping centre. they deserve nothing less and we'd be making the world a better place. World 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. live broadcast This was also the position for the assaults and the robberies committed on the two victims. The existence of criminal activity among these communities is not the issue. I then summed up the entire case, dealing with all the evidence, all the arguments and the law that applied. In my view, all of these men remain a continuing threat to the Sydney community and particularly to young women. While Lebanese settled all over Australia, the majority have consistently settled in NSW and particularly in Sydney. Rania Abouzeids apartment in Beirut, close to the blast site. I cannot say what will happen to these men. The earth-shattering explosion, caused by the unsafe storage of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate at Beiruts port, damaged every part of the city of 2 million people. This surprising evidence was used by the Crown to bolster its case about identification. 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. Until this point, Hajeid and Ghanem had been on bail. Lebanese-Christians have been immigrating to Australia for a very long time now and they have assimilated extremely well into Australian society. I gave that consent. Her evidence was very powerful. 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. 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. 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. The police arrested the perpetrator of the crime as she climbed to the tram, after people called who reported a woman with blood. Diaspora aid to Lebanon is meticulously processed to avoid funds falling into the hands of government officials and intermediaries accused of corruption, with support being sent directly to vetted NGOs, such as the Lebanese Red Cross. 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. But the central bank, Banque du Liban, led by former Merrill Lynch banker Riad Salameh . The men in the red van also sexually assaulted them in the same fashion, as well as punching them and kicking them. 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.. Why did the gang first of all go to a shopping centre at Chatswood? So the problem we have now in Sydney is a ramification of what has been going on in Lebanon.. Unwelcome at school, too much discipline at home, so where do these teenagers go to find respect? Trad asks. 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.'. The two victims were schoolgirls who were wandering around a shopping centre at Chatswood on 10 August 2000 about nine o'clock at night. What was it that caused Bilal Skaf to carefully plan this series of attacks on young women in Sydney? Manorama Online Sports The first community of Lebanese in Australia were Maronite Christians, quickly followed by a large Muslim community. 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. 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. For thousands of Lebanese Australians residing in Lebanon, the opportunity to return to Australia at any point provides a psychological safety net. Africa Lebanese people have become integrated the most in Australian society. The victim was then taken by car to a car park near the Bankstown Trotting Club where she was vaginally raped once and orally raped twice. 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. Dec 13, 2005. 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. 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. For Melbourne-born Alia Melki, that urge to help hit her as immediately as the blast itself. Few crimes in recent Australian history have stirred more community anger and fear than a series of pack rapes committed by more than a dozen young Lebanese men in Sydney's west 18 years ago. 'There were other sexual assault cases I heard, some of children, some of adult women,' Finnane writes. 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 . 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. When later interviewed, Chami claimed that Bilal Skaf told him, 'There's a slut at the Bankstown Trotting Club.' A 44-year-old woman killed two Lebanese residing in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria in the southeast of Australia. 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. Trad thinks the problem can be nipped in the bud by changing the way schools deal with Lebanese delinquents. Relatives have legally . America 'What caused the unprecedented public interest in the Skaf trials, what set them apart from all other sexual assault trials, was the repeated attacks in a short time frame by a gang with a carefully planned strategy,' Finnane writes. 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. The Lebanese community leader says Sydney's legendary Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad (or MEOCS) should "never have been established in the first place - or at least not been given such a terrible title". In the 1980s . Growing up in western Sydney, I was bullied and picked on for everything I did and stood for. Sexual intercourse without consent was the principal crime contemplated and committed. 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 analogy with Australia, Arab organized crime also came to Germany following the Lebanese Civil War. They also robbed the girls. At the time, Mohammed Skaf was still a schoolboy and attended the same school as the victim, to whom he was known as 'Sam'. 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. 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). Stephen Gibbs for Daily Mail Australia. Lebanese Australians (Arabic: , French: australiens libanaise) refers to citizens or permanent residents of Australia of Lebanese ancestry. The crime was comparable to Lebanese gang rapes in Sydney. These two girls did not expect to be driven over the Harbour Bridge. id send all the ones in Australia back to lebanon and then drop a bomb. 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. This trial concerned violent sexual assaults on a young woman of 18 who was travelling home by train on an afternoon on 30 August 2000. 'I reject this complaint as well,' he writes. 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. 34. After finishing school, Basha became involved in more serious crimes. 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. Life cannot. Women's rights activists had long demanded that Article . His attitude was the same throughout the trial. As a policy, multiculturalism was introduced by immigration minister Al . To the streets, thats where., Australian-Lebanese filmmaker George Basha agrees. Shimbiris VIP By this time she was hysterical. 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. Apart from denying that any offences had happened and claiming that the two girls consented to everything, his evidence also placed Ghanem and Hajeid at the park in Greenacre and confirmed that they also had taken part in sexual activity with the two girls. The gang also crash-tackled, punched and kicked these girls and stole items of jewellery that they had on them. 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Confined at home due to Victorias lockdown, Maakasa has taken to social media to connect with others in the Lebanese diaspora across the world and offer assistance however she can. If a person who is guilty, pleads guilty, anxiety and stress to the victims is removed and it is reasonable to give lesser sentences. 4. He agreed that his client showed no remorse and no contrition. Why did those who joined him, become involved? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Lebanese mafia is a Colloquial term for organized crime groups which origin from Lebanon and Levant.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. Many months later he pleaded guilty to a series of sexual offences that included the events of this night. health This went on for some time and eventually Mohammed Skaf used a mobile phone to summon his brother Bilal. Mobile phone technology was used on each occasion to coordinate the attacks, which were well planned and carried out with determination by young men, one as young as fourteen, the oldest being Bilal Skaf at twenty-one years of age. Another curious feature in the trial was Skaf's bold assertion that he was a man of good character. In 1996, 72 per cent of Lebanese in Australia lived in Sydney. 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. They wanted wide publicity. Crimes under Lebanese laws may not be considered offences in Australia. ShiaChat.com may be unavailable periodically Saturday night to Sunday evening while we migrate to new servers and perform some necessary updates. This reflected his complete contempt for the court process and his rejection of any notion of contrition or remorse. These are questions that will probably never be answered. None of the accused or the victims had been drinking alcohol and none had been taking drugs, even though having marijuana was an inducement offered to the two girls. . For the past decades the Arab crime families had controlled 78% of Germany's underworld activities. But when I was older and more Lebanese kids moved to my area, we formed a gang so we could protect each other and I started bullying back. COVID-19 He extended his criminal activities and eventually became known as "the Lebanese . There were other standard instructions thenthe trial began. 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. And given the history of government efforts to obtain information on race, Im not even sure its something we should be doing. Its just amazing to see how much traction it got, Diana Abbas, director of Impact Lebanon, says. This was evidence of incriminating phone calls between him and Chami. There was another man, later identified as Y, who took part in the events on this night. The law provides that a discount of up to 25 per cent is appropriate to be given if the plea of guilty is given at an early time. It was because the police had given up fighting back. Many of the rapists have never been identified and police fear there were more victims who did not come forward. 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