Courier Mail
October 7, 2013
GOLD Coast bikie gangs are actively targeting hot-blooded young Muslim and Eastern European men as they seek to beef up their ranks with aggressive ethnic recruits.
Sources say gangs such as the Bandidos are embracing multiculturalism, signing up Lebanese, Turkish and Balkan members, many from Sydney and Melbourne.
The trend mirrors the early stages of the rise of crime gangs in southern states who recruited from ethnic groups, sources say.
Pacific Islanders such as violent Bandido and Muslim convert Leonard Toalei are also being targeted.
Toalei – who is behind bars on remand over a wild rampage on the Gold Coast two months ago in which police claim a taxi was shot up, a milk truck hijacked and a cabbie and bus driver assaulted – has been embraced by a new Logan-based Muslim ‘brotherhood’ called Ummah United.
Ummah, whose members wear black hoodies and t-shirts with a crossed dagger logo, describes itself as a community group set up to help keep Muslim youth on the straight and narrow.
Toalei is pictured on the Ummah United Facebook site being welcomed back into the fold after being released from jail over a violent siege in Surfers Paradise in which he shot up a woman’s unit, bashed her and bit her on the face.
Within weeks of being released from jail, Toalei allegedly went on another rampage through Southport.
Toalei was arrested during what police claim was a violent struggle in the Southport CBD in which he was bitten by a police dog and tasered. He is back behind bars awaiting his next court appearance on multiple serious charges including serious assault, robbery and weapons offences.
Several photos of Toalei posing with fellow Ummah United members in the group’s black hoodie appear on Ummah United’s Facebook page. A caption on one photo reads ‘Brothers forever’.
The group describes itself as a non-profit organisation founded last year to ‘help the Muslim youth fight against the temptations (of) harmful society’.