Pubdate: Sat, 23 Sep 2000
Source: Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2000 Sun-Sentinel Company
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Author: Colin Nickerson, The Boston Globe

QUEBEC LEADERS DREAD MOUNTS AS FEROCIOUS BIKER WAR ESCALATES

MONTREAL -- As the body count soars in Quebec's ferocious biker war,
officials say the province is veering toward its worst breakdown of law and
order since the "October Crisis" of 1970, when a wave of bombings and other
violence by separatist terrorists forced the federal government to suspend
civil liberties and send troops into Montreal.

With 150 killed and hundreds wounded in Quebec during six years of battle
between the Hells Angels and the Mafia-backed Rock Machine for control of
the illegal, drug trade, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien is coming
under intense pressure to order emergency constitutional mesures.

To the horror of civil libertarians, Quebec is ratcheting up appeals to
Ottawa to suspend constitutional protections to give police
sweeping powers to smash the biker gangs that have turned Montreal and
Quebec City into free-fire zones.

"We have to act now," said Quebec Premier Lucien Bopuchard. "Murders don't
wait."

In the wake of recent ambush and wounding of a prominent Quebec journalist,
an attack suspected to be the work of a biker hit squad, Quebec leaders are
comparing the mounting gang violence to the October Crisis -- an event
seared in the memory of a nation that takes pride in its peacefulness --
when the revolutionary Front de Liberation du Quebec exploded bombs,
kidnapped politicians, and murdered officials.

"We are faced with a threat certainly as great as the one we had with the
FLQ," said Serge Menard, Quebec's public security minister. "It's something
I never thought could happen [again], in Quebec."

But civil libertarians are aghast at the proposal to resort to a rarely
used override provision in Canada's constitution that allows the temporary
suspension of civil liberties in times of extreme urgency.

As in the United States, "freedom of association" is enshrined in Canada as
a fundamental civil right, on a par with freedom of speech or religion. One
result is that membership even in criminal oganizations is protected just
as much as membership in a trade union or sewing circle.

Nonetheless, Quebec officials argue that the Hells Angels and their Rock
Machine rivals can be curbed only if membership in the gangs is outlawed.

The comparisons to 1970 are significant. As troop carriers rumbled though
the streets of Montreal that year, nearly 500 members of the Front du
Liberation were jailed solely because of their affiliation with the
self-styled revolutionary movement. But most were soon released because
there was no legal evidence they were anything more than radical
loudmouths. Only a handful of true terrorists in the Front were convicted.

"Democracies don't like to lock up citizens simply because of dubious
affiliation," said A. Alan Borovoy, counsel for the Canadian Civil
liberties Association.

Quebec's biker war started in the mid-1990s as the Hells Angels moved to
take control of the drug trade and other criminal rackets from entrenched
criminal interests. They were soon locked in mortal combat with the Rock
Machine, a biker gang fronting for the Mafia and other organized crime
groups.

Hardly a week passes without the blast of a car bomb, a wild street
shootout, or midnight ambush outside a roughneck tavern. Police combating
biker gangs have been Warning for years that the violence is spiraling out
of control and threatens to spread to other provinces as "Les Hells" -- as
they are called by Quebeckers -- maneuver to become Canada's paramount
organized crime outfit.

Although civilians have been killed in the crossfire of what is seen as the
world's bloodiest biker war, and one bomb blast claimed the life of an
11-year-old Montreal boy, the carnage only became a national political
issue following the Sept. 13 botched attempt to kill Michel Auger, 56,
Journal de Montreal columnist regarded as the dean of Quebec's crime
reporters and a leading authority on biker gangs.

Auger was shot five times in the back as he removed a personal computer
from his car trunk in the parking lot of the Journal, Quebec's
largest-circulation newspaper.

He survived the fusillade, and is recovering at a secret location under
heavy police protection. No arrests have been made, but police say the
ambush was almost certainly related to Auger's two-page expose the day
before on the internecine struggles within the ranks of organized crime in
Montreal. The expose emphasized intrigue among Hells Angels honchos.

Menard, the security minister, has made an extraordinary appeal to Ottawa
to use a special constitutional clause that would allow sidestepping the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- equivalent to the U.S. Bill of Rights --
to attack biker gangs with special laws. Menard urged a five-year,
suspension that would apply only to police efforts to wipe out the Hells
Angels, Rock' Machine and their biker cohorts.

"We need exceptional legislative means for a limited time," he said.

Unlike the United States, Canada has a uniform national criminal code,
although enforcement in Quebec is the responsibility of provincial or
municipal police.

Anne McLellan, Canada's justice minister, pledged that the federal
government would hold "urgent discussions" with Quebec police on how to
combat the biker menace, but stopped short of pledging support for invoking
emergency constitutional measures.

Even in Montreal, epicenter of the violence, other voices are calling for
caution.

"Decisions made in a climate of near-hysteria have a way of turning out
poorly," the Montreal Gazette editorialized. "This is a time to weigh the
complex problems of organized crime coolly."
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