Latest news with #Mongols
Scoop
2 days ago
- Scoop
Gangs Are Going Global And So Is The Illegal Gun Trade – NZ Can Do More To Fight It
, University of Waikato According to the Global Organised Crime Index, international criminal activity has increased over the past two years. And the politically fractured post-pandemic world has made this even harder for nations to combat. New Zealand is far from immune. According to official advice in late March to Minister of Customs and Associate Minister of Police Casey Costello: The threat posed by organised crime in New Zealand has increased substantially in the last five years. Even with the best of will, New Zealand is losing the fight. New criminal groups are becoming active here – from Burma via Malaysia, to the Comancheros and Mongols gangs. Each brings new networks, violent tactics and the potential to corrupt institutions in New Zealand and throughout the Pacific. As of October 2024, the national gang list contained 9,460 names. While there is debate about the accuracy of the figures, gang membership has grown considerably. This is fuelled by the global trade in illegal drugs, with local criminal profits conservatively estimated at NZ$500–600 million annually. The one relative bright spot is that New Zealand hasn't yet seen the levels of firearms-related violence driven by organised crime overseas. For example, European research shows the illegal trade in guns and drugs becoming increasingly intertwined. But waiting to catch up with those trends should not be an option. New Zealand already has a lot firearms. In the past six years, police conducting routine patrols have reportedly encountered 17,000 guns, or nearly ten every day, nationwide. In 2022, official figures showed, on average, approximately one firearms offence had been committed daily by gang members since 2019. The risk had become apparent much earlier, in 2016, with the discovery of fourteen military assault-grade AK47s and M16s in an Auckland house being used to manufacture methamphetamine. This year, another firearms cache, including assault rifles and semiautomatics, was found in Auckland. Progress and problems On the legal front, the main avenues New Zealand gangs use to obtain illegal firearms are being closed off. Under the Arms Act, members or close affiliates of a gang or an organised criminal group cannot be considered 'fit and proper' to lawfully possess a firearm. These people may have specific firearms prohibition orders added against them, which allow the police additional powers to ensure firearms don't fall into the wrong hands. The firearms registry is key to this. There are now more than 400,000 firearms fully accounted for, making it harder for so-called ' straw buyers ' to onsell them to gangs. Despite the progress, several challenges remain. In particular, the nature of the gun registry has been politicised, with the ACT and National parties disagreeing over a review of the system's scope. Arguments over the types of firearms covered and which agency looks after the registry risk undermining its central purpose of preventing criminals getting guns. Theft of firearms from lawful owners needs more attention, too. Making it a specific offence – not just illegal possession – would be an added deterrent. Tighter and targeted policy Accounting for all the estimated 1.5 million firearms in New Zealand will be very difficult – especially with the buy-back and amnesty for prohibited firearms after the Christchurch terror attack likely being far from complete. There are also tens of thousands of non-prohibited firearms in the hands of unlicensed but not necessarily criminal owners. Given all firearms must be registered by the end of August 2028, there should be another buy-back (at market rates) of all guns that should be on the register. This might be expensive, but the cost of opening a large pipeline to criminals would be worse. There needs to be greater investment in staff, education and technology within intelligence services and customs. This will help inform evidence-based policy, and support targeted law enforcement. A recent European Union initiative to track gun violence in real time is an example of how data can help in this way. New Zealand is a party to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (and its two protocols on people trafficking and migrant smuggling). But it is not a party to a supplementary protocol covering the illicit manufacturing and trafficking of firearms and ammunition. That should change. Amendments to the Arms Act since 2019 mean New Zealand law and policy fit the protocol perfectly. By joining, New Zealand could strengthen regional cooperation and increase public safety, given the scale of the problem and its potential to get worse.
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Daily Mail
I posed as a hitman and infiltrated the Hells Angels - they had strict rules to live by and forced me to seduce women
A former undercover US federal officer who infiltrated the notorious Hells Angels biker gang has revealed the lengths he went to be accepted by the secretive organisation in a new Channel 4 documentary series. Jay Dobyns, 63, was embedded within the 'outlaw' biker group in Arizona between 2001 and 2003. He posed as a gun-runner and debt collector to gain the trust of biker gangs - but in reality, Jay worked as an undercover operative for the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The agent detailed how he took illegal drugs, smuggled guns and ammunition for the gang, and even staged a murder to convince the Hells Angels to make him a full member - a goal he admitted was 'selfish'. He also had a fake girlfriend, another federal agent named Jenna Maguire, who revealed how women were treated as 'property' by the gang members - who could rape and even murder them if they crossed the men. But the closer Jay got to getting his full Hells Angels patches, the more entangled he became in his dual identity, leading to tensions in his real-life marriage and relationship with his family. The documentary series, titled Secrets of the Hells Angels, reveals how the bloodthirsty motorcycle club was in their quest to defend what they saw as their 'territory' - particularly against rival motorcycle gang Mongols. The Hells Angels originated in Fontana, California in 1948 and saw the entire state as their territory. But the Mongols were later founded in 1969 in Montobello, California, and wore a California patch that became the subject of dispute between them and the Hells Angels. In order to infiltrate the Hells Angels, undercover law enforcement officers first had to establish themselves as part of an existing gang. Jay told viewers of how he and other officers 'extorted' their way into a smaller gang based in Tijuana, Mexico, and created a charter 'entirely made up of law enforcement officers' in an operation called Operation Black Biscuit. The goal of the 'incredibly risky' operation was to gain the trust of the Hells Angels. Jay said: 'I understood that, as long as they believed my lie, I was safe, but that if I slipped up, there was going to be a price to pay for that.' Jay said that the 'biggest challenge' for him was whether it was possible to be an undercover agent and still 'maintain your dignity and your integrity... in that world'. He claimed that at one point, he was told to take cocaine at gunpoint to prove his authenticity. 'Now, you have to make a choice. Do you want to take a bump of coke? Or do you want a bullet in your brain? It's not a hard decision.' Hells Angels were expected to partake in drugs, theft and womanising - but Jay said the latter had become a 'distraction' from the operation - particularly as he already had a wife and two children. 'I was spending as much time trying to defuse women as I was investigating my case,' Jay claimed. The solution to stop women throwing themselves at Jay was to appoint an agent to play his fake girlfriend, he said. His colleague Jenna Maguire, who was described as 'fearless', was chosen for the job. The biggest risk to Jenna was the Hells Angels' attitude towards women, which treated women as 'property', the documentary said. Jenna said of the group's clubhouses that women's bodies were 'treated like an amusement park', adding: 'Sex could be consensual. It could be rape.' She allowed herself to be 'trained' by the Hells Angels' wives and girlfriends. 'The old lady training process was quite thorough,' Jenna said, claiming that she as told to always 'walk a step behind your old man', 'no speaking when he is speaking', 'provide his food and drink', and 'carry the drugs and his gun'. Jenna recalled a time during their investigation, a woman named Cynthia Garcia made the fatal mistake of 'back-talking' one of the Hells Angels members whilst at the Mesa clubhouse in Arizona. She was 'punched in the face and knocked to the ground' and beaten 'so badly that they decided they needed to kill her'. Cynthia, who was a mother of six, was killed in October 2001. Her death led to a separate operation via an informant, Michael Kramer, who pled guilty to her murder and went to detectives after a crisis of conscience. By the end of the operation, 51 Hells Angels members were arrested across several states, while two other members who directly involved in Cynthia's death, Paul Merle Eischeid and Kevin Augustiniak, were sentenced to 19 and 23 years in prison respectively for second-degree murder. 'Just thinking about what must have been going through her mind, her children, and how terrified she must have been was a very scary reality for me at the time,' Jenna admitted. Jay was in the midst of being recruited as a 'prospect' for the Hells Angels, but there were rumours circulating that he was an imposter. He was locked into the Mesa clubhouse and surrounded by Hells Angels members asking him questions and threatening him with their guns, he said. Describing the 'sketchy situation', Jay said: 'Your heart's beating a million miles an hour, but your hand can't shake. 'I was accused of being a cop... My cover story had been compromised. I was under the assumption I'd be killed for it. 'The Hells Angels had always believed they couldn't be infiltrated. Their mentality was, a cop cannot run as long and as hard and as fast as he would have to, to gain membership in this club before we can sniff him out.' However, Jay was let go and told to wear a Hells Angels 'Prospect' patch instead of the previous club. Being a 'prospect' for the club involved a probationary period of at least one year before he would be given 'full patch' membership. He recalled being given 'pages and pages of rules' he had to adhere to in order to become a full member of the Hells Angels. 'For a group, an organisation that doesn't want to live by rules, they've got a lot of rules,' he quipped. 'I was told, "You will give up every single thing in your life that you think is important to you. Your relationships, your money, your house, your motorcycle, your dog, it doesn't matter what it is. Nothing comes before the Hells Angels".' But the demands of the club put a significant strain on Jay's real family life and tensions rose between him and his real-life wife. 'I wanted to be with the Hells Angels more than I wanted to be with my family. I rarely got home. Sometimes not for weeks, sometimes not for months,' he said. 'My wife confronted me and she said, "You can't walk in this house after being gone that long and speak to us like we're street people". 'Then in my defence, I'm like, "Man, I am not a light switch. I can't turn this off and on. People that do what I do for a living and treat it like a hobby end up dead." Jay admitted that he was having to take medication to 'calm my nerves during the day', as well as to go to sleep at night. He was also taking 'diet pills and energy pills'. 'At one point, I had a big handful of pills in my hand, and I threw them in my mouth and choked them down. Jenna saw me, and she's like, "Man, you are out of control".' Jay's obsession with becoming a full member of the Hells Angels, which included prospecting for charters all over the state, became a 'logistical nightmare' for the ATF. Jay said that getting his full patch was one of his 'personal, selfish objectives' that had nothing to do with the mission he had been working on. 'I chased getting a Hells Angels patch for entirely selfish reasons. I wanted to get it. I wanted to be able to say that I was the guy who got inside on them when no-one else could. He told the Hells Angels he would prove himself by killing a member of the Mongols in Mexico. However, there was reluctance to go ahead with Jay's plan from his supervisors, who feared he would spark a new gang war if he went ahead with it. 'I was so focused on the mission that I didn't really respect that opinion,' Jay confessed. 'I was going to do this.' He was given a gun and instructions on how to commit the murder by the Hells Angels. However, the ATF staged a murder by using a member of their task force and a Mongols jacket that had been seized. A homicide detective helped to build the fake crime scene in order to make it appear real - including using 'bits and pieces and parts from the butcher shop' such as real blood from livestock and tissue from a lung that was placed around the actor's head to make it look like he was shot in the head. Jay showed the bloodied Mongol jacket and photos of the 'murder' to members of the Hells Angels - which was enough to convince them to make him a full member of the gang, but the initiation did not take place immediately. 'I was more gangster than I was a husband or father or federal agent. That's a very dangerous place to be,' Jay confessed. 'My wife had a conversation with me at one point. She said, "You know what? You're out there saving the world and solving everybody else's problems, and your own family's melting down before your eyes". 'And it was true. And at the time, I'm not sure if I cared or at least cared as much as I should have.' According to attorney Kerrie Droban, who appears in the documentary series, the ATF feared Jay was 'almost at the point of no return' and that they were 'losing control of their operative'. It was decided that the investigation would end before Jay received his full patch. Operation Black Biscuit led to the arrest of 36 Hells Angels members and associates, 16 of whom were later indicted on charges ranging from murder to racketeering to drug trafficking. However, many charges were dismissed despite the evidence and the remaining Hells Angels negotiated a plea deal, which became a source of frustration for Jay and his team. 'You commit two years of your life in the blood, sweat and tears to watch it fall apart on the steps of the courthouse,' he said. 'I wanted to leave a legacy. And there is no legacy to leave. I wanted to finish with a reputation and respect and dignity and admiration. And it wasn't there.' The end of the operation also led to death threats against Jay and his family once the truth of his identity was revealed. He was forced to move 'every two weeks' in an effort to find somewhere safe for his family. 'Black Biscuit has been over for 20 years and I'm still trying to get back to my ordinary life,' Jay added. Jay continued to work as on undercover assignments after that operation ended, adding: 'I used all those experiences and all those things that I learned from the Hells Angels and tried to continue to put those in play in other investigations. 'I definitely believe that I was infiltrating the Hells Angels, they were infiltrating me. It is impossible to be immersed in that lifestyle for two years and not be partially impacted by it. 'I think that doing this job and the way I did it for as long as I did it and having this long-term deep-cover experience with the Hells Angels, I don't know how it doesn't change your DNA.
Herald Sun
19-07-2025
- Herald Sun
Finks v Comanchero: Gang recruitment war sparks chaos in Melbourne
Don't miss out on the headlines from Victoria. Followed categories will be added to My News. The rival Finks and Comanchero bikie gangs are locked in a bitter Melbourne power struggle. A wave of fires in recent months which have cost millions of dollars is suspected of being linked to conflict between the clubs. The Herald Sun has been told one theory is that aggressive Fink recruitment of Comanchero members is behind the friction. The practice, known as 'patching-over', is regarded as a provocative move in the outlaw motorcycle gang world. In the past, it has been carried-out without incident in cases where the club doing the patching has vastly more strength than its rival. But the Finks and Comanchero are strong well-established gangs with money and muscle behind them. Underworld sources say a number of suburban businesses have gone up in flames in the tit-for-tat arsons of recent months. Both clubs are regarded as being in Australia's 'big six' outlaw motorcycle gangs, OMCGs. The Comanchero have been hit hard in recent years by prosecutions of some high-ranked members, particularly in fallout from the sprawling Ironside police operation. A number of senior members have been charged and some valued middle-ranking figures have departed on bad terms. But they remain potent and are aligned with exiled crime strongman Kazem Hamad and another shadowy gangland figure operating from offshore. Long-time office-bearer and businessman Bemir Saracevic is still influential in the organisation. Prominent figure Tarek Zahed left Melbourne in 2022 and was shot later that year in a Sydney ambush which claimed the life of his brother Omar. Zahed has been expected to be headed back to Victoria this year after his release from a NSW prison last Christmas. The Comanchero clubhouse at Clyde North was firebombed last month though the motive is not publicly known. The Finks are an expansionist club with strong representation in the outer suburbs and parts of country Victoria. They were on the wrong end of a patch-over in 2013 when many of their members were forced into the Mongols, leading to lingering bad blood which had dire consequences in 2019. Senior Fink Sione Hokafonu was shot late at night in that year outside the Fountain Gate Hotel following an altercation with a man in Mongol gear. Police believe the near-fatal shooting of Mongol Rocco Curra at Bulleen later that year was fallout from that incident. Investigators suspect a Finks member may have been the intended target of an ambush by two Mongols in which innocent fruiterer Paul Virgona was fatally wounded in November of that year. Koshan Radford is believed to be still at the helm of the Finks. Former Comanchero and Mongol Mark Balsillie came on board last year and is one of the club's most senior figures. A group of Finks — among them Hokafonu and Jesse Bonnici — were charged last year after allegedly riding their motorcycles along Southbank Promenade. Counts of reckless conduct endangering serious injury and dangerous driving were later dismissed. A number of members have been previously implicated in illicit tobacco sector arsons and standover work. Murat Shomshe was recently jailed for lighting up tobacco shops at Moe and Croydon in late-2023.
The Hindu
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
What is it about Delhi's contradictions that makes it unforgettable in fiction?
The city of Delhi evokes unease. Its skies are noxious; its politics, vile. Its breath is putrid. Uncouth people run the bureaucracy, sit behind shop counters, and drive their SUVs with mindless, brutal speed, using language that is filthy and whiskey-slurred. Everything about the city evokes a frantic need to escape it. Stereotypes proliferate, like the amaltas bursting forth in vulgar yellow in summer. But even the trees, of which there are many — neem, fig, jamun, gulmohar — are unable to redeem Delhi. It remains, in memory, in conversation, and in comparison to that city by the sea, Mumbai, unloved. Minarets and memories To me, Delhi is home. I grew up in a neighbourhood flecked with the tattered minarets of the Khilji dynasty. I was fascinated by the one closest to my house – Chor Minar, a cylindrical minaret riddled with holes that once held the decapitated heads of thieves, or of the Mongols who raided the Delhi Sultanate in the 13th century. Alauddin Khilji, ruler of the Sultanate, was an insatiable collector of heads. As a child, I played with my friends in the circular park around the minaret, and even climbed its spiral stairway to reach its uneven roof. Years later, across continents, my wistful adult gaze caught the delightful incongruity of a Frisbee or shuttlecock severing the air around the once-terrifying minaret, reducing it to a picturesque backdrop. In both my novels, Stillborn Season (2018) and Of Mothers and Other Perishables (2024), I depict these incongruities in a bid to capture moments of my childhood. The minarets I once knew as mute props now emerge as protagonists in the Delhi I reclaim through fiction. Other beloved landmarks — coffee shops, my convent school in Chanakyapuri, the pillared corridors of Connaught Place — materialise with imprecise details in my narratives. In Of Mothers and Other Perishables, a dead mother, one of the novel's narrators, resurrects her time in the world. She recalls sipping Cona coffee with her future husband at United Coffee House. It is 1974; she has only just met him at a play, Sultan Razia, performed for the first time at Purana Qila. A smidgen of local history seeps into my storytelling, shaping its contours, warming its blood, birthing its characters. Scams, slogans and sitars Recent novels set in Delhi portray a corrupt, polluted metropolis teeming with caricatures. I'd rather not name these works that attempt damning indictments, only to create cardboard fictions. For you have to know a place well enough to damn it with eloquence. A novelist who does immediately spring to mind, though, is Arundhati Roy. To mention her in a piece about Delhi, about writing Delhi, is inevitable, and necessary. In her novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), Roy, builder of irrepressible cities, throws open the Delhi of the hijras who live on its fringes. Shahjahanabad, or Old Delhi, appears as a cacophonous ghetto, its air rippling with prayers emanating from its dargahs, its streets crowded with vendors, cripples, and obese goats destined for slaughter on Eid. New Delhi, the capital, less flamboyant than the older parts, is where 'Grey flyovers snaked out of her Medusa skull, tangling and untangling under the yellow sodium haze.' Roy's Delhi, where the amaltas '…reached up and whispered to the hot brown sky, Fuck You,' is a hectic city, an ancient city, a dispossessed city, a city of scams, a city of slogans and sloganeers. A new anthology, Basti & Durbar: Delhi-New Delhi: A City in Stories (2025), is a soulful exposition of the many Delhis that exist, simultaneously, or piled upon the ruins of erstwhile Delhis. In the introduction, writer and editor Rakhshanda Jalil poses a few questions: 'Is the city central, or peripheral, to the writer's concerns? Can the 'spirit' of Delhi, the sum total of its disparate and disarming parts, ever really be captured in words?' The 32 narratives that follow demonstrate that the elusive 'spirit' of Delhi can, indeed, be conveyed in words. The selection includes a translated excerpt from Mohan Rakesh's Hindi novel, Andhere Band Kamre (1961). Titled 'Ibadat Ali's Haveli in Qassabpura: Two Episodes, Many Years Apart', the excerpt tells of a dilapidated house in the Muslim neighbourhood of Qassabpura, where the narrator, living as a tenant in a rat-infested room, hears the sound of a sitar playing at night. Old Ibadat Ali, owner of the house, which has been taken over by Hindu tenants, sometimes plays his sitar, briefly reinstating the dignity and grandeur of the quarters. From love to literature The stories that, to me, truly represent Delhi are the ones that linger on ephemeral moments of beauty or heroism or love. Preti Taneja's novel We That Are Young (2017) reimagines William Shakespeare's King Lear through the lives of a dynastic business family that lives and conspires in the Farm, in New Delhi. The family also runs the Company, a conglomerate of coffee shops, luxury hotels, and pashmina shawl businesses. Even as the sky swoons and grand tragedies unfold, the narrative offers the unexpected tenderness of a poetry launch at a bookstore in Hauz Khas Village. It is here that Jeet, one of the novel's characters, meets his homosexual lover Vik. Delhi is a place of amorous encounters — romance in public parks, sex for a fee on G.B. Road. Sujit Saraf's 2008 novel, The Peacock Throne, excerpted in Basti & Durbar as 'An Election Meeting in Chandni Chowk', is a subversive account of a Women's Day function organised by the prostitutes of G.B. Road. It is a sensual city, this Delhi; a resilient city, a city of whores, eunuchs, and coiffed rummy players at the Gymkhana Club. And because it is unloved by those who live in its neighbourhoods and study at its universities, it becomes the stuff of literature. The writer is the author of two critically-acclaimed novels.
Observer
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
The epic rise of Baybars, the Panther Sultan
If you're a 90's high school graduate, you must remember the novel 'Wa Islamah' written by Yemeni author Ali Ahmed Ba'katheer and read in Arabic classes. You must also remember the super-long Egyptian movie by the same name produced in 1961 starring Ahmed Mazhar and Lubna Abdul Aziz (while researching this article I discovered that this movie was directed by two directors: Italian Enrico Bomba - who was also the writer and the producer - and Hungarian-American Andrew Marton. It had two names, La Spada del'Islam and Oh Islam. The movie follows the story of the Mamluk Sultan Saif Al Deen Qutuz from birth to his death in 1260. As for the novel, I wasn't a fan as I found the romance between Sultan Qutuz and princess Julnar tedious. However, the side character that always fascinated me was the Sultan's friend Baybars - another Mamluk from a humble background - who ruled after his sudden death. As I'm now in the phase of catching up with Arabic historical series on YouTube that I either missed or never heard of, I came across a Ramadhan series by the name Al Zahir Baybars that was broadcasted in Ramadhan of 2005 (unfortunately no English subtitles provided). The series talks about the rise of Baybars (1223/1228-1277 AD) from a Mamluk slave to becoming the Sultan of Egypt. Baybars was a Kipchak (a tribe form the north of the Black Sea) whose name meant great panther. As a young boy, his parents were massacred by the Mongols and he was sold into slavery. When reaching Egypt, he's bought by Alaa Al Deen al Bunuduqdari, a high rank official who when losing favour with the Ayyubid Sultan Al Saleh Ayub ends up fleeing, leaving behind all his possessions. Under the new Sultan, Baybars joins the Bahari Mamluks headed by Faris Al Deen Aktai and meets his new comrades: Izz Al Deen Aybak and Qutuz. After the death of the Sultan, his wife Shajar Al Durr decides to marry Aybak to maintain her status quo. The power-loving wife manipulates Aybak and orders him to assassinate Aktai when she senses his dissatisfaction with her decisions and fears a future military coup lead by him. Consequently, Baybars flees to Levant with his deputy Qalawun and a few loyal soldiers where he keeps travelling for years between different countries trying to convince rulers to help him invade Egypt. However, things change after Qutuz come to power and asks Baybars to return to Egypt and under his command, the Mongols are defeated in the battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. When Qutuz is assassinated, Baybars becomes the first Sultan of the Bahri Mamluk Dynasty and entitles himself Al Zahir (the discernible). During his 17 years of reign, he ends the presence of the Crusaders in Levant, develops Cairo's infrastructure, builds mosques, libraries, and funds scientific research. He also establishes the first waqf garden that provides food and shelter for stray cats. The series highlights the political and military side of Baybars life which made it interesting. Abid Fahad who plays Baybars was convincing but this can't be said about the rest of the cast who were struggling to speak in Classic Arabic, especially Aybak and Qutuz. Besides, director Mohammed Aziziya's signature battle scenes were too long at times (with close shots of smiling extras supposedly facing death) and some historical facts were tampered with like the death of Aybak and his wife Shajar Al Durr. The fun part was the opening song lyrics that sent viewers on heated discussions in different forums trying to decipher the lyrics and the language used. Rasha Al Raisi The writer is the author of 'The World According to Bahja'
