Bandidos target Muslim recruits
A BIKIE gang on the Gold Coast is targeting young Middle Eastern radicals as part of a major new recruitment drive.
After first zeroing in on unemployed youths in the northern suburbs, the Bandidos have set their sights on members from youth gangs like Ummah United in Logan and south Brisbane.
Bikie sources say the recruitment of Middle Eastern youths is occurring at fast food outlets after the targeting of mosques by police three years ago.
Police are being confronted by new Bandidos wearing vests indicating they are a “probationary member”.
Despite the recent success of the membership drive, the Bulletin has learned only a handful of bikies have been charged with recruitment offences in the past two years.
An investigation launched by criminologist Dr Terry Goldsworthy, a former senior Coast detective, raises concerns about how bikies are quickly rebuilding their membership bases after the VLAD laws closed clubhouses.
“I have data from operations through Right To Information which shows despite the bikie crackdown there has only been six charges of recruitment over a two-anda-half-year period,” Dr Goldsworthy said.
“I don’t understand it. You’re getting all this talk about recruitment drives and we don’t see it transferring into the criminal process.
“I don’t know if they can’t find the evidence. There’s an offence for recruitment. You can face up to five years in prison.”
Police sources maintain the bikie-busting Rapid Action Patrol squad had been told to “attack the recruitment at a street level” which stopped the feeder clubs.
“RAP had to disrupt and dismiss their feeder clubs. But RAP has been split in two with some members up in Coomera doing all sorts of police work,” a police source said.
The connections between Coast bikie gangs and Muslim and Eastern European men first surfaced in October 2013.
Members of Ummah wear blood hoodies and T-shirts and among them are some hostile radicals but their leaders claimed their community group’s aim was to keep youth away from drugs and jail.
Pacific Islanders, including some senior Bandidos who were likely to convert to Islam, were targeted at the time.
After police began visiting the mosques north of the Coast, the publicity about raids led to some Ummah members and other radicals no longer meeting there.
“The Bandidos reached out to them very quickly,” a bikie source said. “They go to the eateries that have halal.
“The Bandidos are definitely going in a Middle Eastern direction. You have their former sergeant at arms, Lionel Patea, converting to Islam.”
Patea converted to Islam to “rehabilitate” himself after murdering his former partner, Tara Brown, and during sentencing said he would be “ultimately judged by God”
Patea’s defence lawyer, Campbell MacCallum, said the conversion by the former bikie was motivated by being apart from his family and having less support while behind bars.
But police fear bikies are mixing more frequently in jail and as more turn to Islam there will be the rise of radical groups.
Goulburn jail late last year became a hotbed of radicalism as inmates were converted by hate preachers.