Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs (36 page)

March 2009

As soon as Boone saw the headlines, it felt like déjà vu all over again. Shortly before midday on 22nd March 2009, Mahmoud ‘Mick’ Hawi boarded Quantas flight QF430 from Melbourne to Sydney and realised that the man sitting a few rows in front of him was a mortal enemy.

For the past eighteen months, the Comanchero MC, of which Hawi was national president, had been locked in a bitter turf war with the Sydney Hell’s Angels, known as the City Crew. There had been dozens of vicious attacks but in recent weeks the level of violence had escalated sharply. On 4th February a bomb had torn off the facade of the City Crew clubhouse, while a few days later, four Angels had kneecapped a Comanchero after abducting him near a biker show.

The City Crew was led by fifty-one-year-old Derek Wainohou, the man that Hawi now saw sitting in seat 39K. Unbelievably, Wainohou was travelling alone. And while he wasn’t wearing his colours, he had the death’s head logo on his t-shirt and was easily recognisable as one of the most notorious figures on the Australian MC scene.

Beirut-born Hawi looked more like a millionaire record producer than the leader of a biker gang. An immaculately
groomed, muscle-bound twenty-eight year-old, he had taken the usual great care over his appearance and was dressed entirely in white. He was flying with four members of his gang. In fact, he rarely travelled anywhere alone. In November 2007, he had been inches from death when a car he was travelling in was ambushed outside an Italian restaurant in a daring daylight attack. Up to ten shots were fired and one bullet lodged itself in Hawi’s headrest. Ever since, he had taken special care with his own personal security.

As the Comancheros settled into their seats, Hawi called out to his old adversary. Wainohou looked round, sized up the situation in a split second and made a curious gesture. He put his left hand up to his face and pulled down the skin under his eye to reveal the pink flesh inside. He then pointed to his eyeball with another finger on the same hand.

Next, in what was fast becoming a tradition of the global biker wars, both sides frantically began sending out a stream of text messages until the flight was ready for take-off and they had to switch off their phones. The seventy-five minute flight was relatively uneventful. At one point the Comancheros became overly boisterous and were asked to quieten down, which they immediately did. None of the stewards had any inkling what awaited them on touchdown at Kingsford Smith Airport. No one felt any need to notify the ground staff.

By the time the plane arrived at Gate 5, reinforcements for both sides had arrived with some heavy-duty weaponry – knives, knuckle dusters and the rest. The rival bikers jumped to their feet, shoving one another as they disembarked, eager to get to the arrivals terminal first. Hawi
pushed Wainohou aside and urged his men on: ‘Come on, boys, let’s go, let’s go!’

Inside Terminal 3, waiting to greet Wainohou, was the Hell’s Angels Sydney chapter sergeant-at-arms Peter Zervas and his younger brother, Anthony. The younger Zervas sibling was not a Hell’s Angel but the fact that his brother was a senior officer with the club and that he spent a great deal of time at the clubhouse meant that he was a member in all but name. He had also attended the same school and had been in the same year as Mick Hawi.

The Zervas brothers had come up against the Comancheros the previous year. In October 2008, Peter had opened a tattoo parlour in Brighton-Le-Sands, deep in the heart of the rival gang’s territory. In an attempt to protect his business interests, he had decided to meet with senior members of the Comancheros to resolve tensions. But the peace talks were wrecked when Anthony burst into the room, brandishing a shotgun. Such an aggressive act would have been bad enough, but what really annoyed the Comancheros was that the kid brother wasn’t an official member of the club and therefore had no right to involve himself in negotiations. A few days later, the tattoo parlour was shot at and then burned to the ground.

Just two days before the meeting at the airport, Anthony demonstrated that his judgement had not improved one iota. He and a friend had travelled to a block of flats where they were looking for an associate of theirs. They stood outside the building, pressing the intercom buttons for every flat and shouting out the man’s name for more than twenty minutes. An off-duty policeman living in the building emerged and told the pair to piss off. ‘Watch yourself or
I’ll kill you,’ screamed Zervas, before stabbing the officer twice, once in the forearm and once in the left tricep. The policeman slammed the front door but Zervas smashed the glass panel and attempted to climb through before changing his mind and running off. The police had been looking for him since then, but had been unable to track him down.

Now, on the Sydney Airport sky bridge to the terminal, Zervas was in his element, trading threats and abuse as the Comancheros squared off against the Angels. He wasn’t the only one. ‘Next time I see you, you’re going to have bullets through you,’ Hawi yelled towards Wainohou. ‘You’re a dead man walking. You’re dead. Do you hear me? You’re fucking dead.’

The Hell’s Angels had more supporters waiting in the arrivals hall while the Comancheros were joined by at least five of their club mates. The rival factions entered arrivals via two glass doors, perhaps eighty metres apart. And then there was a charge to the centre of the vast hall. Wainohou shoulder-charged Hawi. One of the Comancheros responded by punching Wainohou in the face, knocking him to the ground, and then everyone started fighting.

A fierce brawl erupted inside the security barrier, then moved past it ‘like one big rolling ball of mayhem’ towards the terminal’s doors, as one witness attested. Anthony Zervas pulled out a pair of scissors with no handles and lunged towards Hawi, aiming for his eyes. Hawi raised his hand just in time and the blade sank into his forearm. His once pristine white ensemble was now spattered with blood.

As the melee kicked and punched its way past the security point, five or so men picked up steel posts and started swinging them like bats. Horrified passengers ducked for cover as
the battle raged on around them. One witness described them as ‘crazy, like raging bulls’ with ‘fists smashing into each other’s bodies’. Anthony Zervas took a hard shot to the face and crumpled to the floor. Someone picked up one of the bollards, grasping it between both hands like a golf club, then swung it with great force as if he were doing a chip shot with Zervas’s head. Witnesses reported hearing a loud ‘crunching’ sound and watched as a pool of dark red blood began to spread out from under the victim’s body.

The brawlers broke up and fled through the terminal’s main doors. Four leapt into a taxi yelling ‘Go, go, go’, while others ran for the car park. The whole thing had lasted less than thirty seconds. Passengers, including nurses, tried in vain to help Zervas while his brother pleaded: ‘Hang on, Tone’. He died from serious head trauma including multiple fractures to the base of the skull, and three stab wounds to the chest and abdomen puncturing his right lung, liver and stomach.

The attack had taken place in one of the most secure and monitored public spaces in Australia, in front of around 376 witnesses, two armed, federal police officers (who decided to wait for backup rather than intervene) and at least seventy CCTV cameras. Yet it later emerged that one of the cameras was set at the wrong angle, forcing the police to trawl through 120 hours of footage for hard evidence of the crime before they realised that the fatal attack hadn’t been captured on film.

Boone followed what was happening in Australia with a sense of impending doom. Although the Sydney battle wasn’t directly connected to the Outlaws, the international
media had picked up on the story, and the aftermath was being felt by back patch gangs around the world, with talk of an outright flying ban being imposed on bikers. Added to which, the brawl between the Australian bikers could not have occurred at a worse time.

One month later, in April 2009, the Hell’s Angels and the Outlaws found themselves back in the media spotlight as the trial for the Birmingham Airport riot began. The jury heard how up to thirty bikers had clashed in the terminal and watched CCTV footage of some of the fighting. The security cameras clearly showed terrified travellers wheeling their suitcases just metres from where the fighting took place. Others were seen trying to find a place of safety while the battle raged around them.

A small number of Outlaws attended the trial to show support for their brothers. Unlike the Tobin murder case, in which up to one hundred bikers in full colours had paraded around the courthouse and taken it in turns to go inside to listen to the proceedings, the group wore no colours and maintained a low profile.

A massive police operation was in place to prevent further trouble from breaking out and the last thing anyone wanted was another very public confrontation with the authorities. The Outlaws had only just lost the lucrative Rock and Blues show. The last thing they wanted was to lose another big festival – and another big money-earner.

After six weeks of evidence at Birmingham Crown Court and six more days of jury deliberation, three men were cleared and the jury failed to reach a verdict on one of the others. The remaining eight men were given six-year terms. As he handed out the sentences, Judge Patrick
Thomas QC said it gave him ‘no pleasure at all’ to impose the prison sentences on ‘men who, in many ways, are honourable, decent, hard-working family men’. But, he added, ‘your conduct gives me no choice. You are all family men, and the effects of your actions on your families will be very substantial.’

In the summer of 2009, a few weeks after the riot sentences had been handed down, and with the recent Tobin murder seared into the public consciousness, Dink decided to do his part for club PR. As European and Asian President of the Outlaws and thus a key player in one of the world’s biggest and most notorious biker gangs,
Sky News
were keen to secure an exclusive interview with him at the annual Ink and Iron Festival in Birmingham, ahead of the Bulldog Bash.

Speaking to Midlands correspondent Darren Little, he was keen to brush off allegations that his motorcycle club was involved in anything criminal, pointing out that they were simply an easy target for the police.

‘They keep saying they’ve got information on this, that and the other. The only thing I will say is that we are not hiding, we are not underground or secret. Everyone can tell who we are by our colours. It’s not as sinister as they try and make out.

‘Look, if any of our lads have done anything wrong,’ he added, ‘we’ve been punished for it. But in any walk of life, any profession, club or sport, you can always get a few people who do something wrong. If they get punished, they get punished. These things happen.’

When Little asked if the Outlaws were, to quote the
Warwickshire police, an organised crime gang, Dink snorted with derision. ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous. We just do shows. We’re disorganised really. We just get together, we have a laugh – we’re just different. What can I say? To me it’s rubbish, but I can’t stop ’em saying that.’

Asked about his feelings towards the Hell’s Angels, he said, ‘Let them get on with what they’re doing and we’ll get on with what we’re doing. If they want to do shows, I hope it’s a success for them.’

‘Is there a feud?’ asked Little.

‘Obviously people say there’s a feud but then again they write books and they give lectures on it and they earn a lot of money. And if they write a book saying we’re really nice people like boy scouts, they’re probably going to sell ten copies of that book. But if they sensationalise it and say there’s all this is going on, they’re going to sell a lot of copies. So you’re not going to stop people doing that and sensationalising it because they’re making money out of it.’

And what about the shooting of Gerry Tobin, ‘What was your feeling about it when you found out?’

‘These things happen. They were duly punished for it. My feeling was that it was a rather stupid thing to do because it just gives all the authorities the ammunition they have been looking for.’

‘What is your attitude towards them now?’ asked Little. ‘They’re still Outlaws aren’t they? They’re still full patch?’

‘They have done wrong and they have been punished,’ replied Dink. ‘If you have a friend who has done wrong but has been punished, would you just cast him aside? If you’ve known him years, would you just say you’ve done wrong so I’m never gong to speak to you again even though he’s been
punished. Would ya? Or would you say you’ll still speak to him.’

Warwickshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Bill Holland remained unconvinced. ‘If law enforcement does tolerate something like the murder of Gerry Tobin,’ he said, ‘if it’s seen as an isolated event, you run the risk of doing the same as happened in Australia and in other parts of the world where this has been allowed to continue and escalate.’

Warning the public about the dangers posed by the biker gangs was no longer enough, argued Holland. With the Bulldog Bash generating cash profits of up to one million pounds over its four-day run, the police were extremely concerned about just what the Hell’s Angels were getting up to with that kind of money.

Stratford-upon-Avon District Council’s licensing committee had granted the event a new ten-year licence in 2008 but Holland asked the panel to review this (yet again) in the light of ‘heightened’ tensions between the Hell’s Angels and the Outlaws. In his statement to the committee, Holland said: ‘I am satisfied that the Bulldog Bash Ltd is made up of “full patch” members of the Hell’s Angels and their close associates, and that the Hell’s Angels are involved in serious and organised crime. There has previously been serious, including fatal, violence connected to the event and this poses a serious risk.’