lebanese in australia crime

lebanese in australia crime

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 . For thousands of Lebanese Australians residing in Lebanon, the opportunity to return to Australia at any point provides a psychological safety net. trot Why did the gang first of all go to a shopping centre at Chatswood? If the value is 0, it means it is perceived as very low, and if the value is 100, it means it is perceived as very high. The first community of Lebanese in Australia were Maronite Christians, quickly followed by a large Muslim community. In the third trial, the accused were Bilal Skaf, Mohammed Skaf, Mohammed Ghanem and Mahmoud Chami. Bilal Skaf did most of the talking to the girls and called himself 'Adam'. 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. [4] Some of the more notorious Arab mafia families include the infamous el-koura Younes Clan, the Shams Clan the Al Zein Clan[5] and the Miri Clan from Bremen. These are questions that will probably never be answered. In the 1980s . business Rania Abouzeids apartment in Beirut, close to the blast site. His demeanour in the court room said that. Instead of taking her to the Harbour Bridge, Mohammed Skaf drove her to a park in Greenacre. 33. 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. But below the surface of this lower-middle class success story is a Middle Eastern ghetto terrorized by members of its community. Some people believe that Melbourne gangs are behind the new wave of crimes, but the numbers tell us that most unique offenders are Australia-born youths between the ages of 15 to 25. #23. The Lebanese-born population of Australia stood at 70,325 persons in the 1996 census. 'Many of the victims, I am sure, will be affected by these crimes for the whole of their lives. Relatives have legally . This was a criminal conspiracy involving two groups of men, that was carefully coordinated by mobile phones. The ultra-rich lost 10% of their wealth in 2022, study finds, Devin Booker delights against the Hornets, Russian internet celebrity posts 700-year-old holy tree naked! Finnane has compared the Skaf gang's depravity to outrages committed by invading armies in times of war. Skaf is now in Goulburn's Supermax prison serving a 31-year sentence with a minimum of 28 years. What we found was that in a matter of weeks they were excelling the other kids in school. 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. I like Middle Eastern food. (MORE:The Ones That Didnt Make It: Australia-Bound Refugees Languish in Indonesia), In the last few decades unfortunately we have not had peace in Lebanon, Pierre Semaan, of the Australian Lebanese Christian Foundation, tells TIME. She was reading a book of English literature, when a group of men led by Mohammed Skaf surrounded her and commenced to assault her indecently. 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 devastation has profoundly touched Australias 250,000-strong Lebanese community, with the immediate sense of despair now transitioning to a desperate urge to assist. 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. None generated anything like the public attention these trials drew. He later pleaded guilty to some of the offences and when he did, I directed that he not be identified by his name. He did not believe he would be caught. 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. It is also possible that there were other victims who have never come forward. God damn, you see one blonde person from Turkey or Lebanon and you think that there's pure whites in that country. The plan was to kidnap, degrade, sexually assault and humiliate. Counsel for each of the other accused addressed the jury then. From 1880 to the 1920s, mainly Maronite, Melkite and Orthodox Christians arrived on a small scale. 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 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. The complainants clearly identified Skaf, whose counsel suggested to each complainant that she had consented to having sexual intercourse with him. 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. 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. The Australian Embassy in Beirut, opened in 1967, was the third Australian Embassy to be established in the Middle East. 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. 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. It was non-stop, he says. J., Noble, G. Poynting, S. and Tabar, P. (2000) Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime. 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. Dec 13, 2005. And given the history of government efforts to obtain information on race, Im not even sure its something we should be doing. Lebanese Australians (Arabic: , French: australiens libanaise) refers to citizens or permanent residents of Australia of Lebanese ancestry. She was then dumped at a train station after being hosed down. All rights reserved. 'These were not random attacks and, in my view, they were aimed at creating terror in the community. Why was the third victim plucked from a train? 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. Political news They were classified as a Turk due to Lebanon being a province of the Ottoman Empire at that time. However, these crimes were of secondary importance. 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***'. Five computers were stolen along with the servers, Lebanese TV channel LBCI reported. EXTRACT: After the sentences were imposed, many people would say things like, 'I'm glad you got those Lebs,' but I found myself trying to explain that I did not 'get those Lebs' at all. 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. Bourse When later interviewed, Chami claimed that Bilal Skaf told him, 'There's a slut at the Bankstown Trotting Club.' 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 . She was also raped vaginally by another man who also forced oral sex on her. Crimes under Lebanese laws may not be considered offences in Australia. 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. The men in the red van also sexually assaulted them in the same fashion, as well as punching them and kicking them. Racially motivated crime and punishment The treatment of a jailed Lebanese-Australian rapist has highlighted a wider debate about ethnicity and crime in this most cosmopolitan of nations,. 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 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. Counsel for each of the other accused, as well as the Crown, then attacked Bilal Skaf in cross-examination, suggesting he was a liar. But with drive-by shootings, the nature of criminality in Sydney has changed. from 26 May . 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. Single expats: 1.773 USD. Present governor of the State of NSW is a distinguished Lebanese-Christian woman. The main center of Arab organized crime is Sydney, with a significant community of 120,000, followed by Melbourne. The two girls were unaware of the red van until sometime after the men in the white van conveyed them to a park at Greenacre some hours later. At the time, Mohammed Skaf was still a schoolboy and attended the same school as the victim, to whom he was known as 'Sam'. There is no concept in our law that there is a category of person called loose women who are deemed somehow to consent and certainly there is no law that merely because a young woman might give an indication that she was friendly with someone and didn't protest too much when they were laying hands on her that she therefore was consenting to anything. "(Ghazal) said on the show that if he . The . The passion is there and so is the willingness to help, Rebecca Maakasa, a 23-year-old Melburnian, says. Australia's law defines rape as "unlawful sexual act with another person by force; without their consent." 3. Each of Ghanem and Hajeid's counsel put forward arguments that they had not been properly identified and were not present. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Among them is one Australian, with as many as 300,000 made homeless. While Lebanese settled all over Australia, the majority have consistently settled in NSW and particularly in Sydney. 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. Unlike many of the rape cases of which I am aware, there was no previous contact between any of the perpetrators and the victims, except for the second one in which Mohammed Skaf selected a sixteen-year-old from his school to be a victim. In analogy with Australia, Arab organized crime also came to Germany following the Lebanese Civil War. You do what you can.. Women's rights activists had long demanded that Article . According to exclusive statistics from the armed crime squad, there has been a five-fold increase in non-fatal shootings in the north-west in four years and the region now sees almost two thirds of Victoria's non-fatal shootings. Will this be the catalyst that prompts the move home? 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. The number of perpetrators of these crimes has been climbing steadily in recent years, with around six thousand imprisoned in 2021, compared to around half of this number who were imprisoned for. To my mind, the community deserved to be protected from Bilal Skaf for many years. Michael Finnane, the judge who imposed that record sentence - which was later reduced after several appeals - was widely celebrated for his stance at the time. The Pursuit of Justice chronicles Finnane's legal career and lifelong campaigning for for social justice, particularly the treatment of those disadvantaged by the legal system. COVID-19 Sexual intercourse without consent was the principal crime contemplated and committed. Arab world Lebanese people have become integrated the most in Australian society. 'I have thought of this over the years,' Finane writes. 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. 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. One of the dead was Sarkis Abboud, 61 years old, and the second was his friend, Tony Yazbek, two years younger. 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. I think the sentences struck a chord with the public generally because the attacks were predatory and carefully planned. Latest news Breaking news This meant that the Crown could seek my consent to cross-examine him to show that he was a man of bad character. 34. The first found that Middle-Eastern Australians reported more discrimination compared with non-Middle-Eastern Australians. I merely imposed sentences on a number of offenders. . Who could believe anyone would consent to being assaulted, robbed, abused and threatened? You just want more, Basha says. There is no concept in our law that there is a category of person called loose women who are deemed somehow to consent and certainly there is no law that merely because a young woman might give an indication that she was friendly with someone and didn't protest too much when they were laying hands on her that she therefore was consenting to anything. This means that many other gangs of boys are doing the same crimes. Indictable offenses are heard in a superior court in the presences of a jury. Those who pleaded guilty, were given lesser sentences than those who pleaded not guilty, because the law provided for this. Ghanem's convictions for his participation in the attacks that were the subject of the first trial, however, were confirmed. The existence of criminal activity among these communities is not the issue. Knowing this much corruption gives me more reason not to leave Lebanon. That is not the law. 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