Bikies’ link to armed forces face probe

The Australian Defence Force is probing suspected links between up to 50 active personnel across all three services and outlaw bikie clubs across Australia as part of a service-wide crackdown.

Military Police have in the past two months set up a special team of six or seven plainclothes investigators to work full-time on the operation under a senior officer in Canberra.

Each has been given a handful of ‘‘targets’’ – serving military personnel – with known or suspected connections to so-called ‘‘one-per center’’ bikie gangs across Australia, from a list of about 50 drawn up by Defence with help from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.

The investigators, a mix of full-time plainclothes military police from the Australian Defence Force Investigative Service, reservists and seconded civilian police officers, are trawling social media and other ‘‘opensource’’ material and working with state police to put together intelligence profiles on each target.

The team began in June targeting military personnel with links to clubs or related criminal networks in New South Wales and more recently widened its inquiries to Queensland.

A person with knowledge of the operation said links had already been found between military personnel and known civilian drug-trafficking networks.

The source said Defence was now taking the warnings seriously with the aim of weeding out service personnel with the wrong connections.

‘‘If they find a picture on Facebook of a soldier with a Bandido or something, (the investigators) will follow up.

‘‘There might be a brother or an uncle who’s a gang member. That’s enough to get them to look into it.’’ The investigators have interviewed a small number of military personnel. - Fairfax