Several days ago, a group of bikies travelling to Sydney began an altercation on a plane. Mobile phones were used to call reinforcements and by the time they arrived at Sydney Airport there were some 20 wild men ready to fight, as it turns out, to the death. One man did die – he was bludgeoned with metal poles in the arrivals lounge in front of scores of innocent bystanders.
The dead man was the brother of a senior Hell’s Angel. This was the latest in a series of violent attacks and retributions across the Eastern coast of Australia. Two men shot dead in Canberra yesterday, although apparently connected to the Rebels Motorcycle Club, were killed in an incident unrelated to the turf war currently under way.
There are rumours of a potential religious undercurrent to aspects of the current turf war, although this has been denied by a senior member of the Comancheros MC. The head of the Comancheros has called for talks to end the crisis.
Recent moves to crack down on bikies in South Australia are now likely to be extended to a national action. The Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, made a stinging rebuke of the activity of these gangs. The current gang war has been going on for some time and a lot of the trouble seems related to the emergence of a new Motorcycle Club called “Notorious”.
There is a gang war on right now in Australia and it’s likely to get a whole lot more ugly before it gets any better. Attempts to disassemble the gangs in South Australia may only have served to unify them and may have given them a sense of solidarity between clubs. The East Coast gang war which is going on right now can be expected to continue unabated.
