Police raid on a Kogarah, Sydney, apartment and find a huge stash of weapons including automatic guns, explosives, and bullet-proof vests.

Police raid on a Kogarah, Sydney, apartment and find a huge stash of weapons including automatic guns, explosives, and bullet-proof vests. It’s an odd convergence of the national to the domestic. A man in his twenties was simultaneously arrested in the Sydney CBD over the find.Considerable planning, time and funds had to have been expended to accumulate such a large cache of weaponry. The find has been linked to bikie gang activity. A recent spate of shootings and the now-infamous Sydney airport brawl - when dozens of bikies fought each other in the air terminal, resulting in the death of one of them - led to the establishment of Strike Force Raptor in the police. The police are focusing attention on this rogue element in society. In South Australia it is already a crime for bikies even to meet one another, under new illegal assembly laws.

Hell's Angel's bikers brawled through Australia's largest airport Sunday, beating one suspected gang member to death and brandishing metal poles

Warring bikers brawled through Australia's largest airport Sunday, beating one suspected gang member to death and brandishing metal poles "like swords" as they rampaged through the main domestic terminal in front of terrified travelers.
Australia Police said a group of suspected gang members was ambushed as they disembarked from an airplane.

"A fight ensued, the fight moved through various parts of the terminal," said Police Detective Inspector Peter Williams. He said 15 men were involved in the violence, which rampaged from the ground floor up one level to the departures hall before most of the men fled.Williams said one man died in a hospital from head injuries after the brawl, which appeared to bear out warnings of an impending biker war in Sydney."They came running through picking up the big metal barrier poles and swinging them like swords at each other," witness Naomi Constantine told the Australian Broadcasting Corp."I saw one of the men lying on the ground and another man came up with a pole and just started smashing it into his head," she said.Four men were arrested, Williams said. The others escaped, some of them by hailing taxis, local media reported. No charges were immediately laid.
Police did not identify the gangs suspected in the violence.Authorities fear a gang war is brewing in Sydney following string of drive-by shootings and an explosion last month outside a fortified Hell's Angel's clubhouse.

Yee Tong and Sing Wah gangs are believed responsible for the scalping of a man in Auburn

Yee Tong and Sing Wah gangs are believed responsible for a number of violent crimes across Sydney including the scalping of a man in Auburn in July, a vicious kidnapping in April and a multiple stabbing at World Square two months ago.In the past membership has belonged exclusively to the Asian community but now there’s reports other school students are being targeted by the gang, with recruitment based on a social basis and no longer an ethnic line.

Rocket-launchers were sold to Bandidos bikie gang

Australian army officer recently convicted for stealing rocket-launchers from a high-security military repository is also implicated by a former Bandidos bikie gang insider in at least one other criminal transaction where rocket-launchers were sold to bikies.His evidence suggests that many more of the armour-penetrating rocket-launchers may be in circulation in the criminal underworld than the nine officially acknowledged. Former Australian Crime Commission informant Stevan Utah, in hiding overseas, says he witnessed a separate weapons sale by then army captain Shane Della-Vedova from the one for which Della-Vedova was convicted earlier this year.
Della-Vedova is serving a 10-year prison sentence, but at his sentencing in May, his theft of 10 66mm M72 rocket-launchers was painted by his counsel as a "single very stupid mistake which has left his career in tatters". References were provided on his behalf by former army colleagues and much was made of his previously distinguished service record. Della-Vedova's job as an ammunition technician meant he was entrusted to dispose of huge amounts of military weaponry, including rocket-launchers, explosives and hand-grenades, often without any supervision. The court heard that he told police his theft of the rocket-launchers was accidental, that he "just panicked" when he realised he had mistakenly taken them off the base.
But Utah, a former informant with the Australian Crime Commission who helped state and federal police agencies investigate the Bandidos and other motorcycle gangs, said he witnessed Della-Vedova sell five more rocket-launchers to a senior member of the Bandidos in February 2005 -- nearly three years after the offences for which Della-Vedova was convicted. Utah trained as an army ammunition technician within a year of Della-Vedova in the late 1980s. They became friends. Utah said it was obvious at the time that there were huge holes in the military's security, and that until Della-Vedova's arrest in April last year, not much had changed. Utah, a convicted criminal, came forward to police with this information during the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation meeting in Sydney last year when he became aware that some of the weapons on which Della-Vedova was facing charges had been sold to alleged terrorists. One of the weapons was recovered, but the court heard that even after extensive raids and searches across western Sydney, nine of the weapons had still not been found. Court records show that Della-Vedova was entrusted with the disposal of as many as 323 rocket-launchers without any witnesses to their demolition. Utah's evidence suggests that at least five more of those weapons may have been sold to criminals. But a year after his approach to police during APEC, Utah has never been formally interviewed by any police agency.
Nothing that Utah alleged implicates Dean Stephen Taylor, Della-Vedova's co-accused, who was acquitted in late July of charges of possessing and receiving the stolen rocket-launchers and other weapons. When Mr Taylor walked free from the NSW District Court just over a month ago, he said he had "nothing to say at all" about a witness code-named Harrington, a former bikie and convicted drug supplier who testified that Mr Taylor had offered to supply him with the stolen military weapons.
Harrington had an undertaking from the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions that he would not be prosecuted under any federal laws in return for his evidence. But he has no such undertaking from NSW and the CDPP said that any prosecution of Harrington was a matter for NSW.

Bandidos,Police have located a firearm during a morning raid on an outlaw motorcycle gang clubhouse

Police have located a firearm during a morning raid on an outlaw motorcycle gang clubhouse in Sydney’s west following an investigation into licensing breaches.
Operation Indianna, run by Blacktown Local Area Command, saw the gathering of intelligence into a clubhouse run by the Bandidos on Mort Street, Blacktown. It will be alleged alcohol was being sold illegally at the property which does not have a liquor licence.
At 8am, police from Blacktown Local Area Command – including the Proactive Crime Team, General Duties, Highway Patrol, Detectives, Crime Management Unit and Licensing – forced entry into the premises which were unoccupied at the time.
They were assisted by the Public Order and Riot Squad, the Dog Unit, the Rescue and Bomb Disposal Unit, Police Airwing and the Gangs Squad.In a garage at the rear of the property police located a bar with hundreds of bottles of alcohol worth thousands of dollars, a semi-automatic pistol, ammunition, knuckle-dusters, cash, and a till.Police also discovered an illegal electricity reconnection which was allegedly being used to steal power.Operation Indianna falls under the scope of Operation Ranmore which was formed in May last year to crackdown on all criminal activities conducted by outlaw motorcycle gang members.There have been a total of 539 OMCG members and their associates arrested in that time with more than 1290 charges laid. The charges range from traffic matters to drug supply, as well as affray, and participation in criminal group.Blacktown Acting Commander, Acting Superintendent Gary Hutchen, said police would continue to target the activities of outlaw motorcycle gangs in the Blacktown area.“We’ll do that through high visibility policing, licensing operations such as this one today and extensive investigations into any allegations of criminality,” he said. “We want to send a strong message to these people that anti-social and criminal behaviour will not be tolerated.”