The World's Most Evil Gangs

by Nigel Blundell

  Race plays a significant part in the gang wars. In a mass defection, 76 members of the Berlin Bandidos switched gangs to join their previously sworn enemies, the Hells Angels – seen as a ‘nationalistic’ revolt against their Turkish immigrant leadership. The Hells Angels issued what amounted to a declaration of war, vowing: ‘No other gang will be tolerated in Berlin.’ But in May 2012 police raided the city’s chapter and ordered it disbanded. That failed to stem the violence. Within days, gang leader André Sommer was shot in the street and left in a coma. Two Bandidos bosses were shot in revenge.

  Later that year, police retaliated in force, sending 1,000 officers in mass raids across northern Germany. They were relying on information from a Hells Angels supergrass whom they arrested for blackmail, pimping and human trafficking. He told prosecutors of torture sessions and executions. As a result, police in Kiel began digging up a warehouse in a vain search for a body said to be buried in the concrete foundations.

  Two-wheeled gangsterism is peculiarly virulent in Germany but the problem is fast spreading across the rest of Europe – partly due to overseas biker gangs arriving on the Continent to fight for control of drugs, weapons and human trafficking. In January 2013 Europol reported that the arrival of notorious gangs, including Comancheros and Rebels from Australia, Rock Machine from Canada and Mongols and Vagos from the US has exacerbated tensions with established clubs. Europol said the number of biker gang chapters across the continent had increased dramatically to more than 700, with the greatest growth in north-east and south-east Europe. It warned of a repeat of the Nordic biker wars of the 1990s that left at least 11 dead and dozens injured during a three-year battle between Hells Angels and Bandidos in Scandinavia that involved the use of car bombs and machine guns.

  Just as biker violence is often an ‘imported’ problem across northern Europe, so gang rivalry in the south is also split along racial lines. In Spain, home-grown gangs regularly clash with rivals of Latin American origin, particularly in the poorer Madrid suburbs. The overall number of immigrants soared from 1.8 per cent of the Spanish population to more than 10 per cent in the two decades from 1990, the largest groups being Ecuadorians and Colombians. The result is that Hispanic street gangs in the capital have tripled their membership, say police, who accuse them of being behind violent street attacks, kidnappings and killings. The largest and most powerful groups, the Latin Kings and Latin Queens, claim to control certain suburban streets that they have renamed ‘Inca Land’ or ‘Aztec Kingdom’. They identify themselves by ancient mystical symbols, such as the five-point crown, but wear modern rap-style clothes and gold bead necklaces.

  The Latin Kings were originally formed by immigrants to the United States and introduced into Spain only in 2000. Their founder, young Ecuadorian Eric Javier Vara Velastegui, known as ‘King Wolverine’, retained control of his gang from prison after being sentenced to 40 years by a Madrid court for rape, violent assault and kidnapping. The Latin Kings’ big rivals are the Netas, founded in the prisons of Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Don’t Play, from the Dominican Republic. Recently a new and violent group has emerged in Catalonia. Known as the Mara Salvatrucha (‘Salvadorian Gang’), it was formed by Central American migrants to Los Angeles in the Eighties. Worryingly for the Spanish, its ominous motto is: ‘Rape, Control, Kill’.

  Out of the Spanish cities and onto the highways, two other types of gang are more mobile menaces. Bikers are a growing problem, according to the national Policia, who in 2009 raided Hells Angels MC chapters in Barcelona, Valencia and Malaga, where members were charged with drugs and weapons trafficking and extortion. A search of 30 properties yielded military-style weapons and ammunition, bulletproof vests, a kilo of cocaine, neo-Nazi literature and €200,000 in cash. The other problem out on the Autopistas is blatant highway robbery. Crime gangs target hire cars and foreign vehicles, tricking their victims with loud noises, apparent accidents, supposed vehicle problems or pleas for help before stealing bags and valuables. A hotspot for the gangs is the AP7 highway running south down the Mediterranean coast from the French border. GB-registered cars are regularly targeted and the British Embassy in Madrid warned: ‘Motorists may be driving along the motorway and not notice there’s a car close up behind. Someone in the other car throws a stone, creating a loud bang. The British drivers pull over to see what has happened and the gang causes a distraction to steal from them or simply mug them. It’s a growing problem.’

  By contrast, crossing the border into Portugal might seem like the introduction to a peaceable paradise. In 2012 the annual index published by the Institute for Economics and Peace ranked Portugal the sixteenth most peaceable nation in the world. That is not to say it is devoid of crime; the country has always been prone to street offences like purse-snatching and pick-pocketing. But in common with other European countries, the atmosphere altered with the influx of new waves of migrants. Street gangs, particularly in greater Lisbon and Porto, became a source of deep discontent from the Nineties when immigrants arrived from diverse locations around the globe – in particular, the Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Brazil and former Portuguese territories in Africa. The gangs have been blamed for damaging commuter lines, petrol stations and violent attacks in nightclubs.

  Ethnic gangs have caused even greater social upheavals in France where, just like Spain, pan-European crime has become an ‘imported’ problem. Since the summer of 2011 the French government has been working with Romanian authorities to repatriate 15,000 Roma travellers living in makeshift camps and squalid squats. They are deemed responsible for a tenth of all crime in France – half of which, said Interior Minister Claude Guéant, is down to children. ‘It is a cruel, unacceptable situation,’ he said. ‘These children are exploited by mafia bosses who draw them into delinquency and slavery. That cannot be allowed to continue.’ This sort of petty crime is particularly prevalent in busy public areas like the Gare du Nord in Paris. There, teams of young beggars and pickpockets work the concourse, while their Fagin-like masters lurk nearby. Many of these youngsters have been arrested several times but the authorities are powerless to act. A clampdown in 2012 saw hundreds of new expulsion orders issued to the Roma travellers, and begging was banned on the Champs-Élysées and the more popular tourist spots of Paris.

  A study by France’s Public Security Department (DCSP) in 2011 showed that the number of street gangs nationwide had inexplicably doubled since 2008. Almost 500 separate gangs were identified, mainly with memberships of no more than 20, who defend their territory aggressively. With no identity-related insignia, they tend to target schools, shopping malls and street corners, where they deal in drugs and commit petty theft. In a single year, 1,096 gang members were arrested, 438 of whom were minors. Among the most violent gangs are Tamil groups such as the Red Boys, the Viluthus and the Sathanai. In Paris, a 26-year-old Sri-Lankan was found after a gang fight with his head split in two and his hands cut off with an axe or a sabre. But the ethnic gangs are not all male. With names like the Tokyo Girls, Bana Danger and Momi Fiuu, ghetto gangs of black girls aged as young as 14 terrorise parts of Paris and cities as far away as Nice on the Riviera.

  A disturbing link between the two cities emerged in a court case that ended in May 2013 with a seven-year jail sentence for a modern-day Fagin who masterminded the biggest child pick-pocketing gang seen in France, with 500 young girls threatened with beatings and even rape unless they each stole €300 a day. Bosnian gypsy Fehim Hamidovic, aged 60, was accused of running a Dickensian gang of Roma girls as young as 12 who were forced to steal cash and valuables from tourists or face cigarette burns or even more brutal abuse. At the time the ring was dismantled in 2010, police estimated it was responsible for 75 per cent of all thefts in Paris’s Metro system. Two girls, aged just 11 and 14, testified that they were responsible for transferring the entire Paris group’s earnings to Nice. If the takings were less than €60,000 a week, then they would be ‘detained and beaten’.

  Crime of a more organised nature has long pl
agued Nice and its neighbours, where the glittering Mediterranean coast traditionally offers rich pickings for Riviera rogues. From cat burglars to Corsican drug czars, from The Pink Panther to The French Connection, crime in the region from Marseilles to Monaco has often been falsely glamorised. The sprawling, multi-cultural melting pot that is Marseille is often portrayed as the crime capital of France, and gambling, prostitution and drugs have long funded the fearsome families running the city.

  Oddly, before World War Two the smuggling of cheese from Italy was also lucrative. The mobsters who dominated the underworld in those days were mainly Corsican – Paul Carbone and his local sidekick François Spirito, both of whom collaborated with the Nazis. After the war their businesses fell to a new chief gangster, the Corsican Antoine Guerini, and his brothers. They developed what became known as The French Connection, with Marseille the centre for the export of drugs to the US.

  Chicago-style gang warfare arrived there in the 1970s when police estimated that more than £70 million a year was being raked in from drugs, casino rackets, prostitution and extortion. In 1970 alone, more than 100 people died in a wave of shootings that began with the jailing of 70-year-old crime czar ‘Mimi’ Guerini for his part in a gangland murder.

  The spate of killings was stepped up in 1977 after the shooting of ex-jockey Jacques ‘Tomcat’ Imbert, who owed his nickname to his reputation for having nine lives. Imbert, who ran a nightclub in the small Riviera resort of Cassis, was shot 23 times by three hitmen from a rival gang. He survived, though he lost an eye and was permanently crippled. A month after Imbert’s shooting, one of his three attackers was executed at a cemetery while visiting his son’s grave. Next day the second man was killed in the street. The third man was murdered a few weeks later, shot as his car stopped at traffic lights.

  The battle for power on the Riviera erupted into bloody violence again in 1978 when nine people were gunned down in a Marseille bar, riddled with 91 bullets. Five of the victims had police records but the other four were thought to be innocent customers, shot to keep them quiet. Police, who were working closely with the FBI, said they believed the killings were ‘Mafia-linked’.

  Despite the mix of drugs, gambling and prostitution that has dominated the Marseille Mob scene, Jacques ‘Tomcat’ Imbert was still at large in the city after four decades, having avoided any serious convictions and serving only short prison terms. Describing himself as ‘retired’, he told a reporter in late 2012: ‘The cops always came to ask me about the jobs I didn’t do. For the ones I did do, I never saw anyone.’ A legend on the streets of Marseille, he said he felt secure enough not to need bodyguards and to be able to drink in bars with his back to the door. As he pointed out, who’d want to kill a man who had come back from the dead?

  Meanwhile, France’s second city is still battling waves of murderous warfare. Local Marseille politicians even asked for the army to be sent in to tackle the gangs, who nowadays go equipped with Kalashnikovs and other combat weapons. A police spokesman in 2012 described the situation as ‘terrifying and inhuman because the violence has no limits’.

  This may be a digression, but when dealing with the French propensity to glamorise the shadier side of life, it is an opportunity to be reminded briefly of the career of the most notorious Gallic gangster of them all. He was the dashing Jacques Mesrine who, after an early round of bank robberies in Canada, returned to his homeland with the boast that he would become ‘the world’s most famous crook’.

  In 1973 Mesrine and his gang committed a dozen armed robberies, netting millions. When captured that year, he escaped from a court in Compiègne with a gun that an accomplice had hidden in a lavatory – and using the judge as a human shield. Mesrine nurtured the image of a dashing and gallant vagabond, telling a girl bank clerk who had pressed the alarm button: ‘Don’t worry, I like to work to music.’ In court again in 1977, he and a gang member escaped by squirting soapy water into the eyes of their guard, donning his uniform and fleeing over a wall. In 1978 he robbed the flat of a judge who had previously sentenced him to 20 years’ jail. When police came running up the stairs, he fooled them by shouting, ‘Quick, Mesrine’s in there’, and sped past them into the night. On 2 November 1979, police watched as Mesrine, then aged 42, walked with his girlfriend from his swanky Paris apartment to his BMW. Once in the car, the cops took no chances. Twenty-one bullets shattered his windscreen. Mesrine died instantly – though his legend lives on.

  It would be neat to end this chapter on the dark but disparate threads of European lawlessness with this story of a dashing anti-hero. Sadly, the reality of modern-day Continental criminality is depressingly lacking in glamour. The clearest indication of how times have changed in the realms of European gangsterism is not on the smart streets of western capital cities but on the tacky avenues of Buzescu, Romania, lined with tasteless palaces. Buzescu, a town about 50 miles south of the capital Bucharest, has only 5,000 inhabitants but 30 registered scrap metal dealers. It is a hub from which copper, bronze and lead are transported around the world. This is where the proceeds end up from the theft across Europe of metal worth millions – from rail lines, telecom networks, power stations, churches and even war memorials. In Buzescu, the Roma community is among the country’s wealthiest, its gang leaders building huge gaudy mansions, with turrets, pillars and gold-painted roof tiles. Horses and carts rumble by outside but on the driveways stand BMWs, Porsches and Mercedes.

  Across the other side of Europe, in the theft-ravaged Belgian city of Charleroi, magistrate Philippe Dujardin lamented in 2013: ‘In Romania whole neighbourhoods are built with money from the National Belgian Railway Company. The people who live there are leaders of a veritable mafia.’ And in Britain, where metal theft is thought to cost £1 billion a year, copper continues to be ripped from railways, endangering thousands of travellers, and plaques with the names of the fallen vanish overnight from war memorials.

  CHAPTER 27

  THE ROOTS OF EVIL… AND WHY THERE IS NEVER ‘A HAPPY ENDING’

  Sicilian Mafia leader Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina was the man who ordered the most infamous ‘hit’ in Italian criminal history. On 23 May 1992 a half-ton bomb was placed in a drainage pipe under a motorway between Palermo and its international airport. Riina’s men hid in a building above the road and waited. Just before 6pm a convoy of six cars approached. As they passed an old fridge, left at the side of the road as a marker, Mafioso soldier Giovanni Brusca pressed a switch. A vast explosion ripped upwards through the tarmac, catapulting the first car into the air until it landed 70 metres away, among olive trees. The second car, despite being reinforced and bulletproofed, had its engine blown away and the rest of the car plunged into the crater made by the bomb. The third car was damaged but intact. Killed in the lead car were three bodyguards: Rocco Dicillo, Antonio Montinaro and Vito Schifani. They had been guarding the principal occupant of the second car, Giovanni Falcone, who died alongside his wife Francesca. The explosion had been so powerful that it registered on local earthquake monitors.

  The death of Giovanni Falcone shocked the nation. Most adult Italians remember where they were when they heard the news. Several public figures declared themselves ashamed to be Italian. For Falcone was the country’s bravest, most determined law enforcer. The Sicilian Mafia’s nemesis, his death not only demonstrated the organisation’s continued power, it also finally destroyed the myth that had lingered in southern Italy that the ancient secret society was run, as the clichéd claim went, by ‘men of honour’.

  The Mafia’s romanticised roots are as shadowy as its rotten modern-day operations. Even the derivation of the name itself is unknown. It may come from a Sicilian dialect term for bravado or possibly from an Arabic word, mehia, which means boastful. All that is certain about the Mafia’s origins is that it was formed in the thirteenth century as a patriotic underground movement to resist Sicily’s unwelcome rulers, the French. And on Easter Monday 1282, these freedom fighters led a bloody massacre of the foreign invaders as the bel
ls of the capital, Palermo, rang for vespers.

  Over the centuries this secret brotherhood flourished, dedicated to protecting the local populace from the despotic rulers of the island. Similar societies were subsequently founded on the mainland – the four principal crime organisations now being the Sicilian Mafia, or Cosa Nostra as they also call themselves, the Camorra in Naples, the Sacra Corona Unita in Apulia, and the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria. Almost inevitably, all abused their autocratic powers to exploit and subjugate their people rather than protect them. But the real boom years followed the Allied armies’ invasion of Sicily as a stepping stone to the Italian mainland in World War Two. Sicilian families in particular took advantage of the transatlantic drugs trade. Now its evil influence is worldwide – despite attempts by brave politicians, judges and policemen to stamp them out in their home territory.