A former Hells Angel testified Thursday that members of the biker club would discuss some of their criminal activities at the Toronto clubhouse, but only after the business of their formal meetings was done.

But David Atwell also agreed with a lawyer for the Hells Angels that there were rules against such discussions, even though they did occur.

Lawyer Joe Arvay suggested the Angels ran their weekly “church” meetings in a similar fashion to the Boy Scouts.

“There was no criminal activity ever discussed at a church meeting. Isn’t that true?” Arvay asked.

“No, that’s not true,” said Atwell, who testified via video link from an undisclosed location.

“You are right in the first part — that there’s a rule you shouldn’t talk about it. But criminal activity would get leaked to a meeting.”

Atwell, a former police agent who spent his six years as a Hells Angel, is testifying at the civil forfeiture trial between the bikers and the B.C. government.

The director of civil forfeiture agreed to pay the former sergeant-at-arms of the Toronto chapter $75,000 for his evidence. The B.C. government is trying to get three clubhouses in East Vancouver, Kelowna and Nanaimo forfeited alleging that if the Hells Angels continue to own them, the buildings will be used for criminal activity.

Related

• Former Hells Angel testifies at clubhouse forfeiture trial
• Former HA denies $500,000 payment was behind him becoming agent

Atwell has been given a new name and is in the Witness Protection Program after testifying in several Ontario criminal cases targeting the Hells Angels.

Under cross-examination Thursday, Arvay asked Atwell about several passages attributed to him in the book The Hard Way Out: My Life with the Hells Angels and Why I Turned Against Them, by Jerry Langton.

Arvay suggested the passages contradicted evidence Atwell had given this week in B.C. Supreme Court.

“Nothing illegal was discussed, just club business. It’s not illegal to be a Hells Angel and we all wanted to keep it that way,” Arvay read from the book.

“We never did any business in the clubhouse … because we knew that anybody could be listening there.”

Asked Arvay: “Does that accurately describe your views?”

Atwell suggested Langton had attributed things to him that he had never said.

“Yes things that were illegal were discussed in the clubhouse,” Atwell said.

“Almost all of my or most of my drug purchases as an agent originated in the clubhouse.”

But Atwell agreed with Arvay that members of the Hells Angels or those aspiring to join the biker gang were not forced to participate in criminal activities. Some of his former Hells Angels friends had legitimate jobs, Atwell agreed.

He also agreed that a Hells Angel could get kicked out of the group if caught committing a crime in a clubhouse.

“There was also a rule that you couldn’t commit crimes with your Hells Angels crests or patches or rings on because it would look bad toward the brand — the brand the Hells Angels, which was protected by the Hells Angels,” Atwell told Justice Barry Davies.

Atwell completed his evidence, but a second former Hells Angel is expected to testify Friday.

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David Atwell, a former Hells Angel who testified against Toronto gang members several years ago, has been giving evidence this week for the B.C. director of civil forfeiture in his attempt to get three biker clubhouses in this province forfeited.

My colleague covered the first two days of Atwell’s evidence. Here are his stories:

• Former Hells Angel testifies at clubhouse forfeiture trial
• Former HA denies $500,000 payment was behind him becoming agent

I was in court today for his second day of Attwell’s cross-examination. It was a weird set-up. He was on a video link from an undisclosed location. Then there are screens blocking those monitors from those of us in the public gallery as he lives in witness protection.

Here’s my story:

Jesse Margison was a well-known young gangster with a violent history when he was attacked in North Fraser Pretrial in 2012. The injuries he suffered were so severe that he has permanent brain damage and will never be able to care for himself. His lawyers filed a lawsuit against the B.C. government.

I learned today that his suit was settled last year with a payout of $3 million, as was another case of a jailhouse beating that I wrote about in 2015. 

Here’s my latest:

Two men with gang links who were beaten while awaiting trials in Metro Vancouver jails have been awarded a total of almost $3.5 million by the B.C. government to settle their lawsuits.

Independent Soldier associate Jesse Margison was given a $3-million settlement after suffering severe brain damage when another inmate at the North Fraser Pretrial Centre stomped on his head in August 2012.

At the time, he was facing kidnapping charges with several others, but was found unfit to stand trial after the beating, which left him in a coma for several weeks.

Margison’s lawyers filed a civil suit seeking damages to cover the cost of his ongoing care. They argued that jail staff should have been aware of the threats Margison was facing from rival gangsters and taken steps to protect him. 

And Allen Ogonoski, a former gang member of Surrey Thugs Inc., was awarded $496,600 for the brain injury he suffered after being attacked in Surrey Pretrial by a rival gangster on Aug. 15, 2011.

His suit against the B.C. government alleged that he “was intentionally assaulted and battered” by another prisoner named Chris Fulmer with connections to the Red Scorpion gang, and that jail officials were negligent by not recognizing that he was incompatible with the Scorpion.

Both lawsuits were settled in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017. Some details of the agreements were contained in an annual government report titled “Payments under the Crown Proceeding Act,” which was tabled last week.

In Margison’s case, the report said: “The plaintiff claims the province is liable for damages the plaintiff suffered when assaulted by Leonard Cardinal on or about Aug. 12, 2012.

“He claims that in not preventing the assault, the province was negligent and/or breached his rights under section 7 and section 12 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

And in both of the cases, the report said that a government lawyer advised that “the plaintiff might have a successful claim” and “that it is in the public interest to settle the claim.”

Lawyers for the two injured men could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Because of his brain injury, Margison was unable to assist his lawyers in piecing together the events that led up to the assault. They had filed several motions in B.C. Supreme Court to try to get North Fraser records related to gang inmates.

Cardinal pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in the attack, telling a Surrey provincial court judge that he had heard Margison was going to beat him so launched a pre-emptive strike. The judge didn’t buy his explanation, and noted the horrendous injuries that Margison suffered.

Margison’s lawyers later learned their client had been visited at North Fraser in May 2012 by police to warn him that the Hells Angels wanted him dead.

And they determined that Cardinal had been in contact with a jailed Hells Angel just a day before the attack.

Margison’s close associate and former co-accused Troy McKinnon, who was convicted in the kidnapping case, was shot to death in a gangland hit in Nanaimo in January.

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A founding member of the Nanaimo Hells Angels suggested Friday that he had been unfairly convicted in an extortion case because of his membership in the notorious biker club.

Robert “Fred” Widdifield was brought from prison as a witness in the civil trial to determine if three Hells Angels clubhouses in east Vancouver, Nanaimo and Kelowna should be forfeited to the B.C. government.

When asked by government lawyer Brent Olthuis if he had a criminal record, Widdifield said: “I was convicted on a hearsay rule and I was given five years for being a Hells Angel.”

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Barry Davies declared Widdifield an adverse witness in part because of his hostile demeanour on the stand.

Davies also referred to a pretrial interview Widdifield did with a lawyer for the civil forfeiture office in which he claimed the Nanaimo clubhouse had been “stolen” from the Hells Angels when it was seized in November 2007.

Widdifield “retired” from the Hells Angels in June 2014, something referenced in an affidavit his lawyer filed last summer as part of his appeal in the extortion case.

He lost that appeal of his extortion sentence in February.

Olthuis suggested the affidavit was an attempt by Widdifield to distance himself from the Hells Angels to improve his chances on appeal and to show that “any influence the club may have had on you was no longer an issue. Is that fair?”

Replied Widdifield: “I don’t know how you want to spin this thing. But what the hell are you trying to say?”

Davies intervened and told the retired biker to answer the question.

Widdifield admitted Friday that he has occasionally socialized with current Nanaimo Hells Angels despite swearing in his affidavit that he doesn’t maintain contact with any of them.

Asked Othuis: “In what sort of setting would you see them?”

Replied Widdifield: “At a restaurant or at a bar maybe. … I may have lunch with one or two of them.”

He also admitted that he had attended the house the chapter is now using for its meetings “maybe once or twice.”

Asked about the conflicting information in his affidavit, Widdifield testified: “I guess I lied about that.”

Olthuis asked Widdifield if he retired from the Hells Angels “based on any concern for the influence the chapter had on your life.”

“No,” Widdifield said. “I was 62 years old. I had been doing it for 40 years — since I was 23 years old. It was time to retire.”

Hells Angels lawyer Greg DelBigio asked Widdifield if he socialized with Nanaimo bikers after his retirement because they were Hells Angels or because they were old friends.

They had been his friends for decades, he said.

“Nanaimo is a pretty small place,” Widdifield said. “You can bump into people at different places. … Some people I have known since I was six years old.”

Earlier Friday, Olthuis read parts of Widdifield’s earlier pretrial interview with government lawyers.

Widdifield described joining the Satan Angels motorcycle club in 1978 and then being part of the “patch-over” to the Hells Angels in 1983.

He agreed that he was once a director of the company that owns the Nanaimo clubhouse property and had been a party in the government’s lawsuit against the Hells Angels.

And he alleged the police might have stolen a computer from the clubhouse “when you raided the place” in November 2007.

The trial continues next week.

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Fred Widdifield was clearly not happy to be brought from prison to testify for the Director of Civil Forfeiture in its case against his former biker gang.

He had a few testy exchanges with Brent Olthuis who was questioning Widdifield about the decades he spent as a member of the Nanaimo Hells Angels – one of three defendants in the director’s bid to get three clubhouses forfeited.

Here’s my story:

A founding member of the Nanaimo Hells Angels suggested Friday that he had been unfairly convicted in an extortion case because of his membership in the notorious biker club.

Robert “Fred” Widdifield was brought from prison as a witness in the civil trial to determine if three Hells Angels clubhouses in east Vancouver, Nanaimo and Kelowna should be forfeited to the B.C. government.

When asked by government lawyer Brent Olthuis if he had a criminal record, Widdifield said: “I was convicted on a hearsay rule and I was given five years for being a Hells Angel.”

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Barry Davies declared Widdifield an adverse witness in part because of his hostile demeanour on the stand.

Davies also referred to a pretrial interview Widdifield did with a lawyer for the civil forfeiture office in which he claimed the Nanaimo clubhouse had been “stolen” from the Hells Angels when it was seized in November 2007.

Widdifield “retired” from the Hells Angels in June 2014, something referenced in an affidavit his lawyer filed last summer as part of his appeal in the extortion case.

He lost that appeal of his extortion sentence in February.

Olthuis suggested the affidavit was an attempt by Widdifield to distance himself from the Hells Angels to improve his chances on appeal and to show that “any influence the club may have had on you was no longer an issue. Is that fair?”

Replied Widdifield: “I don’t know how you want to spin this thing. But what the hell are you trying to say?”

Davies intervened and told the retired biker to answer the question.

Widdifield admitted Friday that he has occasionally socialized with current Nanaimo Hells Angels despite swearing in his affidavit that he doesn’t maintain contact with any of them.

Asked Othuis: “In what sort of setting would you see them?”

Replied Widdifield: “At a restaurant or at a bar maybe. … I may have lunch with one or two of them.”

He also admitted that he had attended the house the chapter is now using for its meetings “maybe once or twice.”

Asked about the conflicting information in his affidavit, Widdifield testified: “I guess I lied about that.”

Olthuis asked Widdifield if he retired from the Hells Angels “based on any concern for the influence the chapter had on your life.”

“No,” Widdifield said. “I was 62 years old. I had been doing it for 40 years — since I was 23 years old. It was time to retire.”

Hells Angels lawyer Greg DelBigio asked Widdifield if he socialized with Nanaimo bikers after his retirement because they were Hells Angels or because they were old friends.

Fred Widdifield

They had been his friends for decades, he said.

“Nanaimo is a pretty small place,” Widdifield said. “You can bump into people at different places. … Some people I have known since I was six years old.”

Earlier Friday, Olthuis read parts of Widdifield’s earlier pretrial interview with government lawyers.

Widdifield described joining the Satan Angels motorcycle club in 1978 and then being part of the “patch-over” to the Hells Angels in 1983.

He agreed that he was once a director of the company that owns the Nanaimo clubhouse property and had been a party in the government’s lawsuit against the Hells Angels.

And he alleged the police might have stolen a computer from the clubhouse “when you raided the place” in November 2007.

The trial continues next week.

kbolan@postmedia.com

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twitter.com/kbolan

Over the last three weeks, convicted gangster gunman Aram Ali has twice been ordered released from a Metro Vancouver immigration jail.

But the United Nations associate remains behind bars because the Federal Court of Canada has intervened three times to set aside Immigration and Refugee Board orders allowing Ali to stay with his family pending his deportation.

The latest twist in the Ali case came late Friday when Federal Court Chief Judge Paul Crampton sided with the Canada Border Services Agency and granted the stay of an IRB ruling permitting Ali’s release issued just the day before.

The 32-year-old native of Iraq came to Canada as a refugee in 2000. He never got citizenship.

He was convicted of shooting up a rival’s Range Rover outside Surrey’s T-Barz strip club in February 2009. The vehicle’s driver was struck, but the target of the shooting, Independent Soldier Tyler Willock, escaped injury.

Ali testified that he did the shooting for a friend, high-ranking UN gangster Barzan Tilli-Choli. At the time, Ali was on bail on a drug trafficking charge.

Barzan Tilli-Choli in prison in 2013.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge called him a mercenary for hire and in December 2015 sentenced him to eight and a half years, reduced to three and a half after credit for his pretrial custody. 

While serving his sentence, a deportation order was issued against him on the grounds of serious criminality. In March, an IRB member ruled that he was too dangerous to stay in Canada, saying “the circumstances of Mr. Ali’s most recent offence are chilling.”

So when he reached his statutory release date last month, Ali was handed over to the CBSA to await his removal from Canada.

That triggered a routine 48-hour detention review before IRB member Laura Ko on April 20 to determine if he could be let out on bail. Ko ordered his release on a $5,000 bond and several conditions.

The CBSA sought and was granted an emergency stay of Ko’s order later the same day at the Federal Court. Judge Patrick Gleeson issued a second stay of the IRB ruling on April 27, but it was only valid until Ali’s subsequent detention review, which was held May 2 and 3. 

On May 3, IRB member Michael McPhelan ordered Ali released a second time on more stringent conditions and two $5,000 bonds — one put up by his mom in Calgary and the second by a family friend. Both testified for Ali at the Vancouver hearing, which lasted seven and a half hours.

Despite winning the order for his release, Ali remained in custody as the CBSA returned to the Federal Court for a third time to try to get the decision set aside on the grounds that Ali remains too serious a threat to be released.

The court heard arguments over the phone from Ali’s lawyer Veen Aldosky and Sarah Pearson, representing the federal government. Crampton granted the stay of McPhelan’s release order issued just the day before.

But Ali’s fate is not sealed yet. 

Aldosky has already said she is appealing the March IRB ruling declaring her client a danger to the public.

Meanwhile, the CBSA is trying to obtain travel documents for Ali, who left Iraq with his family as an infant and spent years living in a refugee camp in Syria.

Aldosky pointed out at both the IRB and Federal Court hearings that Ali and his family were co-operating in trying to obtain the appropriate Iraqi identification documents.

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When Independent Soldiers founder Randy Naicker stopped outside a Starbucks on a warm June afternoon six years ago, he had no idea that a rival gang had fixed a tracking device to his SUV.

Despite escaping earlier attempts on his life, Naicker ended up being an easy mark that day.

Two masked gunmen blasted him at the busy Port Moody intersection of St. Johns and Queens, before running off and hopping into a getaway vehicle. A black handgun was left near the scene.

Shocked onlookers saw Naicker collapse, fatally wounded, on the concrete beside a grey Infiniti SUV, driver’s door open, a window broken. It was June 25, 4:45 p.m.

Friends and family insist that Naicker, a convicted kidnapper and long-time gangster, had left his criminal past behind.

But to the rival gang that hunted him, it made no difference.

Larry Amero of the Hells Angels (left) with the late Randy Naicker, who founded the Independent Soldiers. Naicker was shot to death in 2012 in Port Moody. (Photo: PNG files)

Just another target

He was just another target in a bloody feud that exploded after popular gangster Gurmit Dhak was gunned down outside Burnaby’s Metrotown mall in October 2010.

Dhak’s execution was the flashpoint for a near decade-long war that has raged across the province and left many dead and wounded in its wake. Few of those behind the violence have been held to account.

But earlier this month, three former Dhak associates — Jason McBride, Michael Jones and Jujhar Khun-Khun — pleaded guilty to participating in the fatal Kelowna attack that left Red Scorpion Jonathan Bacon dead in August 2011.

They admitted they plotted to kill Bacon, Hells Angel Larry Amero and Independent Soldier James Riach — who had formed the Wolf Pack alliance — on the orders of Dhak’s younger brother Sukh in retaliation for the 2010 Burnaby murder.

Jones, 31, has also been identified as a suspect in the plot to kill Naicker during the sentencing of another man, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy in August 2016.

‘The tit-for-tat violence was ongoing,’ says Vancouver police Supt. Mike Porteous. ‘Frankly, even today we are still dealing with a derivative of that ongoing conflict between those groups.’ (Photo: Jason Payne, PNG files)

The agreed statement of facts in the other case said that Jones accessed Naicker’s parkade before the shooting, fixed the tracking device to his vehicle and then waited for an opportunity to kill him.

So far, Jones has not been charged in connection with Naicker’s murder.

But he has admitted that he drove Bacon’s killers to Kelowna’s Delta Grand Hotel on Aug. 14, 2011, where McBride and the late Manny Hairan jumped out and began firing at a Porsche containing Bacon and his associates.

The bloodshed didn’t stop in Kelowna. Dozens of tit-for-tat murders and shootings followed.

Gurmit Dhak, killed Oct. 16, 2010

Anti-gang police worked hard to stem the violence. After Bacon’s murder, they called a news conference to warn the public about the brewing tensions, explaining that the Dhak group was aligned with Sandip Duhre and his associates. The Dhak-Duhre side also had links to the already notorious UN gang, they said.

“I think the real flashpoint we saw was Gurmit Dhak getting killed — that was a big one,” Vancouver Police Supt. Mike Porteous said in a recent interview.

“The tit-for-tat violence was ongoing. Frankly — and I have said this publicly before — even today we are still dealing with a derivative of that ongoing conflict between those groups.”

A month after the Kelowna attack, Khun-Khun, who has now admitted he hunted Bacon, Amero and Riach on 30 to 40 occasions, was critically wounded in a Surrey shooting outside a house that Sukh Dhak was visiting.

Kelowna payback

In October, Dhak associate Stephen Leone, who had been part of the Kelowna hunt, was shot to death in Surrey. Hairan, one of Bacon’s killers, was wounded.

Things escalated further when Duhre was shot to death in the lobby of Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Centre on Jan. 17, 2012. Shocked players from the U.S. and Cuban women’s soccer teams, in town for an Olympic qualifying tournament, were nearby at the time.

The payback for Kelowna was continuing.

Porteous said a “litany” of shootings and murders that spanned months were “all related and they are all intertwined more or less from that particular conflict — that Wolf Pack alliance against the Dhak-Duhre-UN alliance.”

The conflict “accelerated when some of the leaders began to get taken out,” he said.

Armed hitmen were roaming the streets of Metro Vancouver looking for more targets. Police were watching them, later executing search warrants at apartments in Vancouver and Surrey and seizing caches of firearms. Two men connected to the Wolf Pack were later convicted of possessing the guns.

The trail of violence led all the way to Mexico when Tom Gisby, a major organized crime figure in B.C. for decades, was shot to death near Puerto Vallarta. Gisby had worked closely with Gurmit Dhak for years.

Sukh Dhak, younger brother of Gurmit Dhak, outside his B.C. Supreme Court drug trial in October 2012. The younger Dhak ordered retaliation against those he held responsible for his brother’s murder. Sukh Dhak was murdered a month later, in November at Burnaby’s Executive Hotel. (Photo: PNG files)

Meanwhile Sukh Dhak, who police believed was calling the shots on his side of the conflict, was on trial at the Vancouver Law Courts, accused of conspiracy and drug trafficking.

His case was on a break on Monday, Nov. 26, 2012. Dhak and his burly bodyguard Thomas Mantel headed to Burnaby’s Executive Hotel on the Lougheed Highway. They arrived about 11:30 a.m. Their killer was there, too.

Both men were shot to death in front of shocked hotel workers.

Even with the man behind the Kelowna shooting dead, the Wolf Pack wasn’t satisfied.

On Jan. 15, 2013, two of the Dhak pals directly involved in the Bacon murder were targeted on a quiet laneway in Surrey. Khun-Khun was critically injured, but miraculously survived again. Bacon shooter Manny Hairan was killed.

Within weeks, police announced first-degree murder charges against Khun-Khun, McBride and Jones for the Bacon hit and the attempts on Amero, Riach and two women passengers. 

McBride, now 42, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder May 1. The close friend of Gurmit Dhak will not be eligible for parole for 13 years. Khun-Khun and Jones were handed 18-year terms for conspiracy and will have to serve five more before they can apply for parole.

On the day of Gurmit Dhak’s funeral, McBride was one of several associates who met up afterwards in Vancouver’s Kensington Park. Anti-gang police tailed them, fearing there would be retaliation. Two of the men there were arrested with loaded guns, charged and later convicted.

Jujhar Khun-Khun (left) with the late Sukh Dhak in an undated photo. Khun-Khun pleaded guilty earlier this month to taking part in the fatal attack on Red Scorpion Jonathan Bacon outside a major Kelowna resort hotel in August 2011. Dhak was shot to death in November 2012 at a Burnaby hotel. (Photo: PNG files)

‘Bury my brother’

Retired Vancouver Police gang expert Doug Spencer was one of the officers monitoring the funeral that day.

He remembers talking to devastated younger brother Sukh, who was already being urged to retaliate.

“Sukh says all his friends, ‘All they want me to do is kill the guys who killed Gurmit. All I want to do is bury my brother,’” recalled Spencer, who now does anti-gang workshops in schools for the Odd Squad.

Spencer said Gurmit Dhak was a different breed of gangster than some of the younger, more violent guys involved today.

Thomas Mantel, a bodyguard for Sukh Dhak. Both were gunned down in Burnaby in November 2012. (Photo: PNG files)

“His attitude was make money, not war,” Spencer said. “He was old school. He was well-respected. He didn’t cross people. He just wanted to make money. He was an anomaly, really. None of them are like that now.”

The elder Dhak did business with all sides, including Hells Angels. Full-patch bikers wearing their death-head vests or “colours” attended his funeral.

Spencer said he first met the Dhak brothers when they were in elementary school in south Vancouver.

“They were normal kids. Nice kids. You would go up to talk to them and they were like, ‘Hi, officer.’ ”

Gurmit’s path changed when he was in high school. Lotus gang leader Raymond Chan approached him “right off the school grounds,” Spencer said.

“He basically pulled up in a red Porsche and said if you come and work for me, you can have one of these.”

Dhak bit. He was mentored by Chan, who himself was murdered in Richmond in May 2003.

‘I have got to worry’

Spencer said Dhak did stints in jail, where he made more criminal connections and enhanced his underworld reputation. The longest was a seven-year term for manslaughter after an associate in his vehicle shot and killed a 19-year-old outside a Vancouver nightclub in 1999.

“When Gurmit was in jail, he reached out to me and asked me to go talk to his little brother and get him away from the guys he was hanging out with,” Spencer said.

Years later, Spencer approached the elder Dhak about doing an anti-gang video for the Odd Squad to warn others about the perils of gang life. Dhak eventually agreed, making prophetic statements in the eerie video filmed months before his slaying.

“Every day I’ve got to look over my shoulder,” Dhak told Spencer. “I have got to worry — if I jump out of my car am I going to get shot? Or I could be walking in the mall and walking out and get shot. I don’t know.”

RCMP cruisers flood the area around the Kelowna’s Delta Grand Hotel on Aug. 14, 2011, where Red Scorpion gangster Jonathan Bacon was murdered in a very public hail of bullets. (Photo: Don Sipos, PNG files)

Almost eight years later, no one has been charged in Gurmit Dhak’s murder. Amero, the Hells Angel wounded in Kelowna, was arrested earlier this year and charged with conspiracy to kill Sukh Dhak and Sandip Duhre. Two Amero associates are charged with Duhre’s murder. All three remain in pre-trial custody.

Spencer thinks that Dhak would be devastated by all the blood shed in his name.

“I think he would say it wasn’t worth it. I think he would say now ‘what was I thinking?’ ” Spencer said. “He would be really upset about the fact that his brother went down. He tried to be a good big brother to him.”

Key events in the Dhak-Durhe-UN conflict with the Wolf Pack alliance

• Oct. 16, 2010: Popular underworld figure Gurmit Dhak is shot to death outside Burnaby’s Metrotown mall.

• Oct. 21, 2010: Two men linked to the Wolf Pack side, Arash (Monty) Younus and Philip Ley, shot at in their vehicle on Westminster Highway in Richmond.

• Oct. 27, 2010: After Dhak’s funeral, police covertly follow some mourners to Vancouver’s Kensington Park. Two of them — Christopher Iser and Mike Shirazi — are caught with loaded firearms and are arrested. Police said the group was plotted to kill Phil Ley.

• Dec. 12, 2010: Dhak associates shoot up a birthday party at Best Neighbours restaurant on Oak Street in Vancouver. Ten people are wounded, including Wolf Pack member Damion Ryan.

• Aug. 14, 2011: Gunmen linked to the Dhak group carry out a brazen shooting outside Kelowna’s Delta Grand Hotel that results in the murder of Jonathan Bacon and injuries to Larry Amero and two women in their vehicle. Gangster James Riach escapes injury. Bacon, Amero and Riach had joined forces in the Wolf Pack gang alliance.

• Sept. 7, 2011: Police issue a public warning that Wolf Pack associates are looking for revenge against Dhak-Duhre-UN opponents for the Kelowna shooting.

• Sept. 16, 2011: Dhak associate Jujhar Khun-Khun is shot outside a Surrey house that Sukh Dhak was visiting. He survives.

• Oct. 2, 2011: Dhak associate Billy Woo found dead on logging road near Squamish.

• Oct. 22, 2011: Dhak associate Stephen Leone, who was in Kelowna helping in the Bacon hunt two months earlier, is shot to death in Surrey.

• Jan. 16, 2012: Longtime Dhak associate and major underworld criminal Tom Gisby is targeted with an explosive device near Whistler. But the device fails to detonate.

• Jan. 17, 2012: Sandip (Dip) Duhre is executed in the lobby of Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Centre.

• Jan. 19, 2012: Dhak associate Sean Beaver is shot to death in Surrey, second man wounded.

Police cordon off the scene at Burnaby’s Metrotown mall on the night of Oct. 16, 2010, where Gurmit Dhak was murdered, igniting a gang war with seemingly no end. Nearly eight years later, no one has been charged. (Photo: Ric Ernst, PNG files)

• April 28, 2012: B.C. gangster Gisby, 47, is shot to death while vacationing in Mexico.

• May 30, 2012: Duhre associate Gurbinder Singh (Bin) Toor, 35, is shot to death outside a Port Moody community centre.

• June 25, 2012: Independent Soldiers founder Randy Naicker gunned down in Port Moody.

• June 27, 2012: Wolf Pack-linked Phil Ley and Dean Wiwchar are charged with firearms offences after police investigating the Duhre murder search apartments linked to them.

• Nov. 26, 2012: Sukh Dhak and his bodyguard Thomas Mantel are shot and killed at the Executive Hotel in Burnaby.

• Jan. 13, 2013: Dhak associate Manjot Dhillon is shot to death in Surrey after posting anti-Wolf Pack images on his Facebook page.

• Jan. 15, 2013: Dhak associates Jujhar Khun-Khun and Manny Hairan are targeted in a Surrey shooting. Khun-Khun is critically wounded. Hairan, identified as one of the Kelowna shooters, dies.

• Feb. 25, 2013: Dhak associates Jujhar Khun-Khun, Jason McBride and Michael Jones are charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in connection with the Kelowna shooting and Jonathan Bacon murder.

• March 18, 2013: Wolf Pack associate Rabih Alkhalil is charged with the murder of Sandip Duhre.

• Jan. 2, 2014: Red Scorpion Matthew Campbell is stabbed to death in Abbotsford after a run-in with rivals. An associate of Jujhar Khun-Khun is charged, but the charge is later stayed.

• Jan 2, 2015: Dhak associate Arundeep Cheema, 23, is shot to death in a vehicle outside the home of an associate.

• June 7, 2016: Wolf Pack gangster Harjit Deo, whose name surfaced in connection with the 2012 murder of Duhre pal Bin Toor, is shot to death in Toronto in a targeted hit.

• July 31, 2016: Former Dhak associate Sean Kelly, 27, is shot to death in Surrey.

• May 29, 2017: Kelowna murder trial of Jujhar Khun-Khun, Jason McBride and Michael Jones begins before Justice Allan Betton and goes on until October, when the proceedings adjourn to deal with a disclosure issue.

• Jan. 25, 2018: Hells Angel Larry Amero, wounded in the 2011 Kelowna shooting, is charged with conspiracy to kill gangster Sandip Duhre and Sukh Dhak in 2012. His Wolf Pack associate Dean Wiwchar is charged with murdering Duhre and plotting to kill Dhak.

• May 1, 2018: Dhak associates Jujhar Khun-Khun and Michael Jones plead guilty to conspiracy to kill Amero, Bacon and Riach in Kelowna in August 2011. Jason McBride pleads guilty to second-degree murder.

Related

• Three gangsters in Bacon murder plot slapped with stiff prison sentences
• Guilty pleas in 2011 gangland shooting that shook Kelowna
• Former gangster says Dhak contracted UN to kill enemies

kbolan@postmedia.com

Blog: vancouversun.com/tag/real-scoop

Twitter.com/kbolan

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Is there more to this story? We’d like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com.

I spent the last few days piecing together this weekend feature about all the murders and shootings that are believed to be linked to the conflict between the so-called Dhak-Duhre-UN group and the Wolf Pack.  

The trail of destruction is devastating. So many people have been killed. So few charges have been laid. Hopefully with the May 1 pleas, and the upcoming trial of Amero, Alkhalil and Wiwchar in the Duhre shooting, some families at least will get justice.

Here’s my story:

Fatal flashpoint: Gurmit Dhak’s 2010 murder ignited a gang

war that’s still raging

When Independent Soldiers founder Randy Naicker stopped outside a Starbucks on a warm June afternoon six years ago, he had no idea that a rival gang had fixed a tracking device to his SUV.

Despite escaping earlier attempts on his life, Naicker ended up being an easy mark that day.

Two masked gunmen blasted him at the busy Port Moody intersection of St. Johns and Queens, before running off and hopping into a getaway vehicle. A black handgun was left near the scene.

Shocked onlookers saw Naicker collapse, fatally wounded, on the concrete beside a grey Infiniti SUV, driver’s door open, a window broken. It was June 25, 4:45 p.m.

Friends and family insist that Naicker, a convicted kidnapper and long-time gangster, had left his criminal past behind.

But to the rival gang that hunted him, it made no difference.

Just another target

He was just another target in a bloody feud that exploded after popular gangster Gurmit Dhak was gunned down outside Burnaby’s Metrotown mall in October 2010.

Dhak’s execution was the flashpoint for a near decade-long war that has raged across the province and left many dead and wounded in its wake. Few of those behind the violence have been held to account.

But earlier this month, three former Dhak associates — Jason McBride, Michael Jones and Jujhar Khun-Khun — pleaded guilty to participating in the fatal Kelowna attack that left Red Scorpion Jonathan Bacon dead in August 2011.

They admitted they plotted to kill Bacon, Hells Angel Larry Amero and Independent Soldier James Riach — who had formed the Wolf Pack alliance — on the orders of Dhak’s younger brother Sukh in retaliation for the 2010 Burnaby murder.

RCMP cruisers flood the area around the Kelowna’s Delta Grand Hotel on Aug. 14, 2011, where Red Scorpion gangster Jonathan Bacon was murdered in a very public hail of bullets. (Photo: Don Sipos, PNG files)

Jones, 31, has also been identified as a suspect in the plot to kill Naicker during the sentencing of another man, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy in August 2016.

The agreed statement of facts in the other case said that Jones accessed Naicker’s parkade before the shooting, fixed the tracking device to his vehicle and then waited for an opportunity to kill him.

So far, Jones has not been charged in connection with Naicker’s murder.

But he has admitted that he drove Bacon’s killers to Kelowna’s Delta Grand Hotel on Aug. 14, 2011, where McBride and the late Manny Hairan jumped out and began firing at a Porsche containing Bacon and his associates.

The bloodshed didn’t stop in Kelowna. Dozens of tit-for-tat murders and shootings followed.

Anti-gang police worked hard to stem the violence. After Bacon’s murder, they called a news conference to warn the public about the brewing tensions, explaining that the Dhak group was aligned with Sandip Duhre and his associates. The Dhak-Duhre side also had links to the already notorious UN gang, they said.

“I think the real flashpoint we saw was Gurmit Dhak getting killed — that was a big one,” Vancouver Police Supt. Mike Porteous said in a recent interview.

“The tit-for-tat violence was ongoing. Frankly — and I have said this publicly before — even today we are still dealing with a derivative of that ongoing conflict between those groups.”

A month after the Kelowna attack, Khun-Khun, who has now admitted he hunted Bacon, Amero and Riach on 30 to 40 occasions, was critically wounded in a Surrey shooting outside a house that Sukh Dhak was visiting.

Kelowna payback

In October, Dhak associate Stephen Leone, who had been part of the Kelowna hunt, was shot to death in Surrey. Hairan, one of Bacon’s killers, was wounded.

Things escalated further when Duhre was shot to death in the lobby of Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Centre on Jan. 17, 2012. Shocked players from the U.S. and Cuban women’s soccer teams, in town for an Olympic qualifying tournament, were nearby at the time.

The payback for Kelowna was continuing.

‘The tit-for-tat violence was ongoing,’ says Vancouver police Supt. Mike Porteous. ‘Frankly, even today we are still dealing with a derivative of that ongoing conflict between those groups.’ (Photo: Jason Payne, PNG files)

Porteous said a “litany” of shootings and murders that spanned months were “all related and they are all intertwined more or less from that particular conflict — that Wolf Pack alliance against the Dhak-Duhre-UN alliance.”

The conflict “accelerated when some of the leaders began to get taken out,” he said.

Armed hitmen were roaming the streets of Metro Vancouver looking for more targets. Police were watching them, later executing search warrants at apartments in Vancouver and Surrey and seizing caches of firearms. Two men connected to the Wolf Pack were later convicted of possessing the guns.

The trail of violence led all the way to Mexico when Tom Gisby, a major organized crime figure in B.C. for decades, was shot to death near Puerto Vallarta. Gisby had worked closely with Gurmit Dhak for years.

Meanwhile Sukh Dhak, who police believed was calling the shots on his side of the conflict, was on trial at the Vancouver Law Courts, accused of conspiracy and drug trafficking.

His case was on a break on Monday, Nov. 26, 2012. Dhak and his burly bodyguard Thomas Mantel headed to Burnaby’s Executive Hotel on the Lougheed Highway. They arrived about 11:30 a.m. Their killer was there, too.

Both men were shot to death in front of shocked hotel workers. 

Sukh Dhak, younger brother of Gurmit Dhak, outside his B.C. Supreme Court drug trial in October 2012. The younger Dhak ordered retaliation against those he held responsible for his brother’s murder. Sukh Dhak was murdered a month later, in November at Burnaby’s Executive Hotel. (Photo: PNG files)

Even with the man behind the Kelowna shooting dead, the Wolf Pack wasn’t satisfied.

On Jan. 15, 2013, two of the Dhak pals directly involved in the Bacon murder were targeted on a quiet laneway in Surrey. Khun-Khun was critically injured, but miraculously survived again. Bacon shooter Manny Hairan was killed.

Within weeks, police announced first-degree murder charges against Khun-Khun, McBride and Jones for the Bacon hit and the attempts on Amero, Riach and two women passengers. 

McBride, now 42, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder May 1. The close friend of Gurmit Dhak will not be eligible for parole for 13 years. Khun-Khun and Jones were handed 18-year terms for conspiracy and will have to serve five more before they can apply for parole.

On the day of Gurmit Dhak’s funeral, McBride was one of several associates who met up afterwards in Vancouver’s Kensington Park. Anti-gang police tailed them, fearing there would be retaliation. Two of the men there were arrested with loaded guns, charged and later convicted.

‘Bury my brother’

Retired Vancouver Police gang expert Doug Spencer was one of the officers monitoring the funeral that day.

He remembers talking to devastated younger brother Sukh, who was already being urged to retaliate.

“Sukh says all his friends, ‘All they want me to do is kill the guys who killed Gurmit. All I want to do is bury my brother,’” recalled Spencer, who now does anti-gang workshops in schools for the Odd Squad.

Spencer said Gurmit Dhak was a different breed of gangster than some of the younger, more violent guys involved today.

“His attitude was make money, not war,” Spencer said. “He was old school. He was well-respected. He didn’t cross people. He just wanted to make money. He was an anomaly, really. None of them are like that now.”

The elder Dhak did business with all sides, including Hells Angels. Full-patch bikers wearing their death-head vests or “colours” attended his funeral.

Spencer said he first met the Dhak brothers when they were in elementary school in south Vancouver.

“They were normal kids. Nice kids. You would go up to talk to them and they were like, ‘Hi, officer.’ ”

Gurmit’s path changed when he was in high school. Lotus gang leader Raymond Chan approached him “right off the school grounds,” Spencer said.

“He basically pulled up in a red Porsche and said if you come and work for me, you can have one of these.”

Dhak bit. He was mentored by Chan, who himself was murdered in Richmond in May 2003.

‘I have got to worry’

Spencer said Dhak did stints in jail, where he made more criminal connections and enhanced his underworld reputation. The longest was a seven-year term for manslaughter after an associate in his vehicle shot and killed a 19-year-old outside a Vancouver nightclub in 1999.

“When Gurmit was in jail, he reached out to me and asked me to go talk to his little brother and get him away from the guys he was hanging out with,” Spencer said.

Years later, Spencer approached the elder Dhak about doing an anti-gang video for the Odd Squad to warn others about the perils of gang life. Dhak eventually agreed, making prophetic statements in the eerie video filmed months before his slaying.

“Every day I’ve got to look over my shoulder,” Dhak told Spencer. “I have got to worry — if I jump out of my car am I going to get shot? Or I could be walking in the mall and walking out and get shot. I don’t know.”

Almost eight years later, no one has been charged in Gurmit Dhak’s murder. Amero, the Hells Angel wounded in Kelowna, was arrested earlier this year and charged with conspiracy to kill Sukh Dhak and Sandip Duhre. Two Amero associates are charged with Duhre’s murder. All three remain in pre-trial custody.

Spencer thinks that Dhak would be devastated by all the blood shed in his name.

“I think he would say it wasn’t worth it. I think he would say now ‘what was I thinking?’ ” Spencer said. “He would be really upset about the fact that his brother went down. He tried to be a good big brother to him.”

Key events in the Dhak-Durhe-UN conflict with the Wolf Pack alliance

• Oct. 16, 2010: Popular underworld figure Gurmit Dhak is shot to death outside Burnaby’s Metrotown mall.

• Oct. 21, 2010: Two men linked to the Wolf Pack side, Arash (Monty) Younus and Philip Ley, shot at in their vehicle on Westminster Highway in Richmond.

• Oct. 27, 2010: After Dhak’s funeral, police covertly follow some mourners to Vancouver’s Kensington Park. Two of them — Christopher Iser and Mike Shirazi — are caught with loaded firearms and are arrested. Police said the group was plotted to kill Phil Ley.

• Dec. 12, 2010: Dhak associates shoot up a birthday party at Best Neighbours restaurant on Oak Street in Vancouver. Ten people are wounded, including Wolf Pack member Damion Ryan.

• Aug. 14, 2011: Gunmen linked to the Dhak group carry out a brazen shooting outside Kelowna’s Delta Grand Hotel that results in the murder of Jonathan Bacon and injuries to Larry Amero and two women in their vehicle. Gangster James Riach escapes injury. Bacon, Amero and Riach had joined forces in the Wolf Pack gang alliance.

• Sept. 7, 2011: Police issue a public warning that Wolf Pack associates are looking for revenge against Dhak-Duhre-UN opponents for the Kelowna shooting.

• Sept. 16, 2011: Dhak associate Jujhar Khun-Khun is shot outside a Surrey house that Sukh Dhak was visiting. He survives.

• Oct. 2, 2011: Dhak associate Billy Woo found dead on logging road near Squamish.

• Oct. 22, 2011: Dhak associate Stephen Leone, who was in Kelowna helping in the Bacon hunt two months earlier, is shot to death in Surrey.

• Jan. 16, 2012: Longtime Dhak associate and major underworld criminal Tom Gisby is targeted with an explosive device near Whistler. But the device fails to detonate.

• Jan. 17, 2012: Sandip (Dip) Duhre is executed in the lobby of Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Centre.

• Jan. 19, 2012: Dhak associate Sean Beaver is shot to death in Surrey, second man wounded.

• April 28, 2012: B.C. gangster Gisby, 47, is shot to death while vacationing in Mexico.

• May 30, 2012: Duhre associate Gurbinder Singh (Bin) Toor, 35, is shot to death outside a Port Moody community centre.

• June 25, 2012: Independent Soldiers founder Randy Naicker gunned down in Port Moody.

• June 27, 2012: Wolf Pack-linked Phil Ley and Dean Wiwchar are charged with firearms offences after police investigating the Duhre murder search apartments linked to them.

• Nov. 26, 2012: Sukh Dhak and his bodyguard Thomas Mantel are shot and killed at the Executive Hotel in Burnaby.

• Jan. 13, 2013: Dhak associate Manjot Dhillon is shot to death in Surrey after posting anti-Wolf Pack images on his Facebook page.

• Jan. 15, 2013: Dhak associates Jujhar Khun-Khun and Manny Hairan are targeted in a Surrey shooting. Khun-Khun is critically wounded. Hairan, identified as one of the Kelowna shooters, dies.

• Feb. 25, 2013: Dhak associates Jujhar Khun-Khun, Jason McBride and Michael Jones are charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in connection with the Kelowna shooting and Jonathan Bacon murder.

• March 18, 2013: Wolf Pack associate Rabih Alkhalil is charged with the murder of Sandip Duhre.

• Jan. 2, 2014: Red Scorpion Matthew Campbell is stabbed to death in Abbotsford after a run-in with rivals. An associate of Jujhar Khun-Khun is charged, but the charge is later stayed.

• Jan 2, 2015: Dhak associate Arundeep Cheema, 23, is shot to death in a vehicle outside the home of an associate.

• June 7, 2016: Wolf Pack gangster Harjit Deo, whose name surfaced in connection with the 2012 murder of Duhre pal Bin Toor, is shot to death in Toronto in a targeted hit.

• July 31, 2016: Former Dhak associate Sean Kelly, 27, is shot to death in Surrey.

• May 29, 2017: Kelowna murder trial of Jujhar Khun-Khun, Jason McBride and Michael Jones begins before Justice Allan Betton and goes on until October, when the proceedings adjourn to deal with a disclosure issue.

• Jan. 25, 2018: Hells Angel Larry Amero, wounded in the 2011 Kelowna shooting, is charged with conspiracy to kill gangster Sandip Duhre and Sukh Dhak in 2012. His Wolf Pack associate Dean Wiwchar is charged with murdering Duhre and plotting to kill Dhak.

• May 1, 2018: Dhak associates Jujhar Khun-Khun and Michael Jones plead guilty to conspiracy to kill Amero, Bacon and Riach in Kelowna in August 2011. Jason McBride pleads guilty to second-degree murder.

The only man convicted in the 1985 Air India bombing can skip future counselling sessions even though a psychologist says he has “made minimal gains in therapy,” the Parole Board of Canada has ruled.

Inderjit Singh Reyat has been convicted twice of manslaughter in the deaths of 331 people, as well as for perjury after he lied at the terrorism trial of his two co-accused, who were later acquitted.

When Reyat was released from prison in 2016 after serving two-thirds of his third sentence in the perjury case, he was put on special conditions, including that he attend counselling “to address contributing factors to your offending.”

But that condition was removed by parole board member Catherine Dawson on April 29 because Reyat was no longer benefiting from the counselling.

The psychologist who worked with Reyat said in a report that he had “made minimal gains in therapy.”

“You have presented as guarded, denied your involvement in the Air India tragedy, and have denied that you are a person of strong political beliefs,” Dawson said in her decision, released Monday.

Reyat told his counsellor that all he had done is supply bomb parts to the terrorists, which he saw as “an act of kindness.”

“You have explained that any ‘missteps’ were a result of bad judgment in your desire to be helpful. Nonetheless the psychologist indicates that you appeared to partly address a cognitive distortion that in your desire to ‘help’ you may have turned a blind eye contributing to violence on a mass scale,” Dawson wrote. “The board remains very concerned with the gravity of your criminal offending that contributed to the deaths of 331 people. The impact of these deaths on families as well across the community and around the globe is incalculable.”

Dawson also said that Reyat’s remorse was more about the impact of his crimes on his family, not on the victims.

“The Board has noted you have not gained measurable insight into the harm you caused others but only the consequences that you and your family experienced. You have not developed empathy for others through the process; the gains you have made in psychological counselling are limited.”

But Dawson also said that Reyat’s case management team “has been working closely with a police high risk target team in order to monitor” him in the community.

“The report indicates that there are no current conditions with respect to your activities or associates in the community.”

The official end of Reyat’s sentence comes in August 2018.

“Having thoroughly considered the contents of your file, the recent findings of a psychologist and the professional opinions and recommendations of your case management team the board has determined that psychological counselling is no longer advancing your correctional plan and is unlikely to do so in the next three months,” Dawson said.

“The board finds that, given all of these factors, that the condition is no longer reasonable and necessary.”

Reyat had attended the counselling sessions as required since he was released into the community two years ago.

“The psychologist reports that you have been co-operating in attending sessions but have appeared uncomfortable generally discussing issues with her,” the decision said. “The issues discussed over the course of therapy have included your understanding of the offence, empathy, your domestic life, your concert over your family finances and employment. The psychologist indicates that you present as a man reluctant to discuss your personal feelings.”

Reyat was convicted in 1991 of manslaughter for building a bomb that exploded on June 23, 1985 at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, resulting in the deaths of two baggage handlers. He got a 10-year sentence.

In February 2003, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the same day bombing of Air India flight 182, which exploded en route to India from Canada. All 329 people aboard perished.

In 2011, he was sentenced to seven and a half years for lying at the trial of Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri. Both were found not guilty in March 2005.

The two bombings were plotted by B.C. Sikh separatists who targeted India’s national airline to retaliate for the Indian Army’s raid a year earlier on the Golden Temple — Sikhism’s holiest shrine — in Amritsar.

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Homicide investigators have been called in after a man was shot to death at a gas station just off the highway at 232 Street in Langley Tuesday evening.

Police also found another torched vehicle several kilometres away – which has become a hallmark of Lower Mainland gang shootings of late.

The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has not released any information yet. But reporters at the scene say a dark Range Rover has bullet holes in it.

MORE TO COME…

If you know anything, can you email me? kbolan@postmedia.com

A violent Lower Mainland gang was contracting itself out to commit murders for larger, more-established organized crime groups, Vancouver Police Supt. Mike Porteous said Thursday.

But the “Gill group”, headed by 21-year-old Taqdir Gill, has now been dismantled after a months-long investigation that resulted in seven arrests and the seizure of four guns, Porteous said.

“Project Temper, a gang violence suppression operation, has resulted in the dismantling of the Gill group. This violent crime group was comprised of several individuals,” Porteous told reporters. “The VPD is committed to aggressively targeting people who pose the most risk to our communities.”

Gill, Walta Abay, 23, Hitkaran Johal, 19, are all charged with conspiracy to commit murder between Oct. 5 and 27, 2017.

Both Gill and Abay are also charged with possession of a loaded, restricted or prohibited firearm on Oct. 26, and being in a vehicle knowing there was a gun inside.

Porteous said the murder conspiracy involved “several victims” — some of whom were rival gang members.

But a Vancouver businessman with no gang links was also targeted by the group, Porteous said.

None of the victims are listed in court documents obtained by Postmedia.

Porteous said at one time the Gill group was aligned with the Kang faction of Brothers Keepers, which has traditionally been on the Red Scorpion side of a decade-long regional conflict.

But Postmedia has learned that the Gill group had switched allegiances to the United Nations side.

“I would suggest that they were working within a cell themselves, but they were working more on a contract basis for other crime groups or bigger crime groups,” Porteous said.

“The way these gangs are structured … across the region — there’s sort of the Red Scorpion-associated people and on the other side there’s the United Nations-associated people.”

He said smaller groups of upstarts or younger would-be gangsters form their own smaller gangs and align themselves with one side or the other.

Also charged are Simrat Lally and Pawandeep Chopra, both 20, and two youths who were 17 when their alleged offences occurred and therefore cannot be identified.

Lally is facing counts of conspiracy to discharge a firearm and conspiracy to commit arson, as well as two counts of possessing a firearm and one of being in a car containing a gun. Chopra allegedly possessed a loaded or restricted firearm on Oct. 30 in Vancouver. One youth is facing firearms charges while the other is charged with conspiracy to commit arson.

Porteous said the Gill group came to the attention of anti-gang investigators after a series of shootings last August.

“There was a spike in gang violence,” he said. “They were proactively targeted. We used a variety of police methods to gather evidence, including surveillance.”

Because the gang operated across the region, the VPD worked with the anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, Porteous said.

CFSEU Chief Officer Kevin Hackett said the teamwork is “critical” and will continue.

“The coordinated and strategic engagement, disruption, and enforcement efforts that we have collectively undertaken since the start of this joint operation will continue as part of our long-term regional strategy,” Hackett said.

Even young gangsters who are not criminally sophisticated, like those in the Gill group, seem to have easy access to firearms, Porteous said.

“We are seeing more and more weapons on the street. We are close to the border and a lot of stuff comes from across the line,” he said. “They are easily accessing weapons, so it is not that difficult. They are out there on the market for them to purchase.”

Porteous defended anti-gang programs aimed at prevention despite the young ages of those involved in the Gill group.

“There are 19, 20 and 21 year olds conspiring to commit murder, so apparently it wasn’t sinking in for them. But it does work for many others,” Porteous said of programs like End Gang Life.

“The overall education and prevention strategies that the police are using across the region are reducing (gang involvement) at the grassroots level.”

kbolan@postmedia.com

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twitter.com/kbolan

The VPD is asking any member of the public who has information on any violent crime to please contact them at 604-717-0505 or to call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477.

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Less than two weeks after Michael Jones admitted to his role in the conspiracy to kill Jonathan Bacon, he has pleaded guilty to plotting to kill Independent Soldiers founder Randy Naicker.

My colleague was in court today for Jones’ plea, that was negotiated as part of the agreement in Kelowna entered into court on May 1.

Jones gets 18 years for the Naicker plot, to be served concurrently to the 18 year term he was given for the Bacon conspiracy.

While that might not seem to be any additional punishment for plots that resulted in the murders of two men, it is likely to impact when Jones gets paroled.

However until May 1, he had been facing two counts of first-degree murder, both of which have been dropped in exchange for the pleas.

Here’s is my colleague’s story:

And in a surprise development in court today, Ontario resident Knowah Ferguson pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Hells Angel Damion Ryan in April 2015. Ryan was sitting in the food court area of the Vancouver airport when a gunman wearing a burka attempted to shoot him. The gun jammed.

A sentencing date for Fergurson, who is only 21, will be set on May 30.

Ten years after his brother was killed in Surrey, 31-year-old Amanjot Hans has been identified as the region’s latest murder victim.

Hans was shot to death at a Langley gas station Tuesday evening about 9 p.m. just after arriving in a dark Range Rover. Investigators believe his murder was targeted.       

On March 19, 2008, Hans’ older brother Harkinder was gunned down in the parking lot of the Eagle Quest Golf Club in Surrey. At the time, police said he had gang links. He had also been named as a defendant in a massive ICBC fraud case involving a number of gangsters.

His father Balwant claimed in 2008 that the elder brother was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and that he was a law-abiding SFU student.

Harkinder’s murder remains unsolved.

Cpl. Frank Jang, of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, said investigators will be looking at whether the murders of the brothers a decade apart are linked.

Amanjot Hans had no criminal record in B.C., according to the online court database.

At least one Hells Angel prospect was mourning Hans’ death on social media.

But sources say Hans had friends and associates in several different groups.

Jang said investigators are still hoping to get dash cam video from drivers who were travelling along 72 Avenue between 232 Street and Highway 10 from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. May 15.

And they are looking for the public’s help to determine what Hans was doing before his fatal visit to the Chevron station Tuesday night.

“We are releasing Mr. Hans’ name in an effort to determine his activities and who he may have had contact with before his death,” Jang said. “We urge anyone with information to please come forward.”

Police also found a dark-coloured Dodge pickup truck burning in the 8300-block of 196 Street in Langley shortly after Hans was shot.

Torching suspect vehicles has become a hallmark of Lower Mainland gang shootings in recent years. Jang said investigators are looking for information about the torched truck as well.

Anyone with information is asked to contact IHIT at 1-877-551-4448 or ihitinfo@rcmp-grc.gc.ca.

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Several young gangsters who Vancouver police say were particularly violent are now facing 20 serious charges from conspiracy to commit murder to possession of prohibited firearms and conspiracy to commit arson.

The alleged leader of the group is Taqdir Gill, who is only 21. His “cell” was aligned with the Kang faction of the Brothers’ Keepers, but then switched to the rival United Nations gang. In fact, some in the Gill group were apparently hunting the Kangs when the VPD arrested them several months ago. 

Gill was also targeted in a drive-by shooting outside his parents’ southeast Vancouver home last summer.

Here’s my full report:

Vancouver Police are investigating a double-shooting that sent two people to hospital early Friday.

Const. Jason Doucette said in a news release that the targeted shooting happened about 6 a.m. in a residence on Industrial Avenue near Station Street.

Both victims have been taken to hospital. 

“No arrests have been made. Officers will remain in the area as the investigation continues,” Doucette said.

Meanwhile the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team is at the scene of another suspected murder in Richmond.

Richmond RCMP Cpl. Dennis Hwang said a body of a man was found Thursday shortly after 11 a.m. in the 16000-block of Dyke Road.

Anyone with information should contact IHIT at 1-877-551-4448 or ihittipline@rcmp-grc.gc.ca.

MORE TO COME…

Family members of two young Victoria sweethearts murdered 31 years ago expressed relief and gratitude Friday after a Washington man was arrested in connection with their brutal slayings.

William Earl Talbott, 55, was picked up as he left his Seattle trucking job Thursday and charged with killing Tanya Van Cuylenborg, 18, in November 1987.

He is also expected to be charged with murdering Tanya’s boyfriend, Jay Cook, 20, Snohomish County Det. Jim Scharf said Friday.

Cook’s mother, Lee, said she had “waited and hoped for a day like this” ever since Jay and Tanya vanished while on an overnight trip to Seattle. Days later, their bodies were found dumped in neighbouring Washington counties.

“How could we have known that instead the day could be so bittersweet. On one hand, we are closer to closure. And on the other, we are still at a loss and I don’t have my only son Jay,” Lee Cook said after thanking investigators for their dedication to the case.

Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg are shown in undated handout photos.

For Tanya’s brother, John Van Cuylenborg, the arrest has given him “a sense of some justice that is starting to happen here for these two wonderful kids.

“They deserve justice to be done. They were both gentle souls, caring and trusting kids, and they were betrayed,” he said.

Talbott was identified after a company called Parabon Nanolabs was hired to assist investigators using new DNA technology.

Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore used a public databank to upload the suspect’s DNA and build a family tree from those with partial matches back to Talbott’s great-grandparents.

She then started building the tree forward until “two of the closest matches’ trees converged. They intersected into a marriage, and from that marriage there was only one son.”

“That led us to really only one person who could carry this mix of DNA,” said Moore, who offered her condolences to the families.

Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary said Talbott’s arrest “shows how powerful it can be to combine new DNA technology with the relentless determination of detectives.”

“We never gave up hope that we would find Jay and Tanya’s killer,” he said.

But he said more work needs to be done in the case.

“Skagit and Snohomish county detectives are looking to speak to anyone who knew Talbott or knew of his activities in 1987 or 1988. He would have been 24 years old at the time of the crime and living in Woodenville,” Trenary said.

Police want to know if anyone saw Talbott driving the Cook family’s brown van or in possession of Tanya’s Minolta X700 camera.

Trenary’s voice broke when he described arresting someone after so much time.

“It is a difficult thing for us, but candidly, this is what we do our jobs for,” he said.

Scharf said Talbott refused to talk to investigators when he was arrested. He said the suspect appears to have never married or had a family.

“We don’t have any idea what the motive was here. We are not even sure how the individual met up with our victims,” Scharf said.

Talbott had been arrested before for drugs and possibly indecent exposure, but the cases were dismissed, Scharf said.

Just last month, Snohomish County detectives held a news conference to release composite drawings of a suspect that Parabon had created using DNA markers.

Scharf said the images did not have any impact on the break in the case, which only happened because of the use of the genealogy website.

In April, police in California used the same technique to arrest Joseph James DeAngelo, who is suspected of being the Golden State Killer. Critics complained that law enforcement was potentially invading the privacy of unwitting website users.

But Scharf and the family members of the slain couple defended the investigative technique.

“If it hadn’t been for genetic genealogy, we wouldn’t be standing here today. And if it’s not allowed to be used in law enforcement, we would never have solved his case,” Scharf said.

kbolan@postmedia.com

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TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS IN THE MURDER CASE:

Jay and Tanya left Victoria on Nov. 18, 1987 for what was supposed to be a quick trip to Seattle.

The couple caught the MV Coho ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, arriving at about 5:30 p.m. They missed a turnoff, so stopped at a local grocery store.

They got to Allen, Wash., at about 9:30 p.m. and stopped at a deli there. At 10:16 p.m., they bought a ticket for the Bremerton ferry to Seattle, which would have put them in the city about 11:30 p.m.

The pair had planned to sleep in the van near the former Kingdome stadium. A missing persons report was filed two days later, according to news archives.

Jay’s body was found days later dumped on the side of the road in Snohomish County, covered with a blue blanket. He had been strangled.

On Nov. 24, a man walking on an isolated road near Alger, south of Bellingham in Skagit County, discovered Tanya’s body in a ditch. She had been sexually assaulted and shot in the back of the head with a .38-calibre firearm. She had been restrained with zip-tie-type fasteners.

The following day, her wallet, her ID, keys for the van, a pair of surgical gloves and a partial box of ammunition were found under the back porch of a Bellingham pub. The brown van that Jay and Tanya had been driving was found a block away from the pub, beside the Greyhound bus station, locked and in a parking lot.

A witness told police it had been there since Nov. 21.

Some of the couple’s items were missing — a green backpack and a black men’s jacket, as well as Tanya’s Minolta camera, which has never been found, although its lens turned up at a Portland pawnshop in 1990.

Victoria couple Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook were murdered in 1987 in Washington State. Earlier this year, police released an image of a potential suspect in the unsolved killings that was created by Snapshot DNA phenotyping. The image shows the suspect at age 25, 45 and 65.

For the past 13 years, Snohomish Det. Jim Scharf has been working with Skagit County detectives trying to solve the kidnapping and slaying of Tanya Van Cuylenborg, 18, and Jay Cook, 20. This map shows a timeline of the case.

Snohomish County Cold Case Detective Jim Scharf, left, presents new images rendered using phenotype technology of a potential suspect in the unsolved case of the 1987 double homicide of Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg during a press conference in Everett, Washington on Wednesday, April 11, 2018.

December 5 1987. Skagit County Sheriff Gary Frazier examines Jay Cook’s 1977 Ford van in which he and his girlfriend Tanya Van Cuylenborg were on their way to Seattle. Cook’s 1977 bronze-colored Ford van was found abandoned in Bellingham parking lot a week after the couple went missing.

High school sweethearts, Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook, vanished on a trip to the Seattle in 1987. Their bodies were found a few weeks later in separate locations in Washington state.

Missing poster for Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook.

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It was just last month that we were reminded of the horrific details of the 1987 murders of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook.

The case had gone unsolved for more than 30 years. Until this week.

Investigators announced Friday that they had made an arrest after using a public genealogy website to find relatives that matched the DNA found at the crime scene three decades ago.

NOTE: I am closing comments for the long weekend as I will be out of town.

Here’s my story:

Family members of two young Victoria sweethearts murdered 31 years ago expressed relief and gratitude Friday after a Washington man was arrested in connection with their brutal slayings.

William Earl Talbott, 55, was picked up as he left his Seattle trucking job Thursday and charged with killing Tanya Van Cuylenborg, 18, in November 1987.

He is also expected to be charged with murdering Tanya’s boyfriend, Jay Cook, 20, Snohomish County Det. Jim Scharf said Friday.

Cook’s mother, Lee, said she had “waited and hoped for a day like this” ever since Jay and Tanya vanished while on an overnight trip to Seattle. Days later, their bodies were found dumped in neighbouring Washington counties.

“How could we have known that instead the day could be so bittersweet. On one hand, we are closer to closure. And on the other, we are still at a loss and I don’t have my only son Jay,” Lee Cook said after thanking investigators for their dedication to the case.

For Tanya’s brother, John Van Cuylenborg, the arrest has given him “a sense of some justice that is starting to happen here for these two wonderful kids.”

“They deserve justice to be done. They were both gentle souls, caring and trusting kids, and they were betrayed,” he said.

Talbott was identified after a company called Parabon Nanolabs was hired to assist investigators using new DNA technology.

Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore used a public databank to upload the suspect’s DNA and build a family tree from those with partial matches back to Talbott’s great-grandparents.

She then started building the tree forward until “two of the closest matches’ trees converged. They intersected into a marriage, and from that marriage there was only one son.”

“That led us to really only one person who could carry this mix of DNA,” said Moore, who offered her condolences to the families.

Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary said Talbott’s arrest “shows how powerful it can be to combine new DNA technology with the relentless determination of detectives.”

“We never gave up hope that we would find Jay and Tanya’s killer,” he said.

But he said more work needs to be done in the case.

“Skagit and Snohomish county detectives are looking to speak to anyone who knew Talbott or knew of his activities in 1987 or 1988. He would have been 24 years old at the time of the crime and living in Woodenville,” Trenary said.

Police want to know if anyone saw Talbott driving the Cook family’s brown van or in possession of Tanya’s Minolta X700 camera.

Trenary’s voice broke when he described arresting someone after so much time.

“It is a difficult thing for us, but candidly, this is what we do our jobs for,” he said.

Scharf said Talbott refused to talk to investigators when he was arrested. He said the suspect appears to have never married or had a family.

“We don’t have any idea what the motive was here. We are not even sure how the individual met up with our victims,” Scharf said.

Talbott had been arrested before for drugs and possibly indecent exposure, but the cases were dismissed, Scharf said.

Just last month, Snohomish County detectives held a news conference to release composite drawings of a suspect that Parabon had created using DNA markers.

Scharf said the images did not have any impact on the break in the case, which only happened because of the use of the genealogy website.

In April, police in California used the same technique to arrest Joseph James DeAngelo, who is suspected of being the Golden State Killer. Critics complained that law enforcement was potentially invading the privacy of unwitting website users.

But Scharf and the family members of the slain couple defended the investigative technique.

“If it hadn’t been for genetic genealogy, we wouldn’t be standing here today. And if it’s not allowed to be used in law enforcement, we would never have solved his case,” Scharf said.

kbolan@postmedia.com

vancouversun.com/tag/real-scoop

twitter.com/kbolan

---

TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS IN THE MURDER CASE:

Jay and Tanya left Victoria on Nov. 18, 1987 for what was supposed to be a quick trip to Seattle.

The couple caught the MV Coho ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, arriving at about 5:30 p.m. They missed a turnoff, so stopped at a local grocery store.

They got to Allen, Wash., at about 9:30 p.m. and stopped at a deli there. At 10:16 p.m., they bought a ticket for the Bremerton ferry to Seattle, which would have put them in the city about 11:30 p.m.

The pair had planned to sleep in the van near the former Kingdome stadium. A missing persons report was filed two days later, according to news archives.

Jay’s body was found days later dumped on the side of the road in Snohomish County, covered with a blue blanket. He had been strangled.

On Nov. 24, a man walking on an isolated road near Alger, south of Bellingham in Skagit County, discovered Tanya’s body in a ditch. She had been sexually assaulted and shot in the back of the head with a .38-calibre firearm. She had been restrained with zip-tie-type fasteners.

The following day, her wallet, her ID, keys for the van, a pair of surgical gloves and a partial box of ammunition were found under the back porch of a Bellingham pub. The brown van that Jay and Tanya had been driving was found a block away from the pub, beside the Greyhound bus station, locked and in a parking lot.

A witness told police it had been there since Nov. 21.

Some of the couple’s items were missing — a green backpack and a black men’s jacket, as well as Tanya’s Minolta camera, which has never been found, although its lens turned up at a Portland pawnshop in 1990.

 

A Vancouver police search of a Yaletown apartment that resulted in the seizure of an illegal AK-47, two Ruger guns, a silencer and ammunition violated the Charter rights of the condo resident, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled.

Justice Heather MacNaughton acquitted Michael John French of several firearms charges after she ruled that the guns could not be used as evidence because the police initially searched his 16th floor unit in May 2014 without a warrant.

The Crown in the case had argued that police had exigent circumstances to go into French’s suite at 1199 Seymour Street because of a call from a neighbour that French had assaulted someone. Officers had also been told that French was suicidal and had sent disturbing text messages to friends.

But MacNaughton noted in her May 16 ruling that French cooperated with police and complied with their request to exit the suite. No officers asked his permission to go inside.

“There was no objective basis for a concern that there was a victim of an assault in the suite. There was also no objective basis to believe that there was a possible assailant in the suite who would present a risk to them,” MacNaughton said.

After an initial walkthrough, the officers found a live round for a .233 calibre firearm on the kitchen floor. They went back in a second time and looked for a gun.

One officer testified that when he searched a closet, “he found a pistol, two magazines loaded with ammunition, and a threaded suppressor, or silencer, which appeared to fit the threaded end of the pistol.”

At that point police placed French under arrest, locked down the suite and went to obtain a search warrant.

They came back the following evening around 10:30 p.m. with the warrant and found the AK-47 and another rifle, plus oversized magazines and ammunition.

MacNaughton said she had no choice but to disallow the firearms into evidence.

“I have concluded that the warrantless search of Mr. French’s residence was unlawful and unreasonable. The initial search violated his rights under Section 8 of the Charter,” she said. “The subsequent warrantless search and the search under warrant were also unlawful, as the grounds for them were undermined by the illegality of the first search.”

Police would not have been able to get a search warrant without the information obtained during the improper search, she said.

She also ruled that police violated French’s rights when they handcuffed him in the hallway after he complied with their request to come out of the apartment.

MacNaughton acknowledged that the charges against French were serious and “that there is a substantial public interest in this case in having them adjudicated on their merits.”

“This is particularly so because Mr. French had the firearms in a residential building in the heart of downtown Vancouver,” she said.

But she sad in the long term, the reputation of the justice system “would be adversely affected by admitting the firearms.”

kbolan@postmedia.com

blog: vancouversun.com/tag/real-scoop

twitter.com/kbolan

read the full ruling

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A major Coquitlam fentanyl trafficker, who sold more than 50,000 of the deadly pills in a year, was sentenced Friday to 16 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug and firearms charges.

B.C. Provincial Court Judge Gene Jamieson said Andrew Leach preyed on drug addicts and put his own family at risk by storing fentanyl, hundreds of thousands in cash and firearms inside their Coquitlam home.

“Mr. Leach was engaged as the head of an organization with a long, lucrative history of fentanyl sales,” Jamieson said. “The particularly pernicious nature of the substance at the heart of this operation having been the centre of a persistent and deadly health crisis in the province must be recognized and denounced.”

Leach was captured on wiretap threatening to slit the throat of someone who owed him money and suggesting to an associate that his friend was a “rat” and needed to be shot.

Jamieson said the threats, coupled with Leach’s 2011 conviction for manslaughter, were aggravating factors in his sentencing.

“Such threats are particularly troubling and aggravating in light of his capacity for violence, as shown by his manslaughter conviction arising from stabbing a Hells Angels associate as that person sought to retreat away from Mr. Leach,” he said.

“It is apparent that with access to weapons, his experience in committing a violent offence, together with the temper he exposed in the audio recordings, provide a recipe for danger.”

Federal prosecutor Maggie Loda had argued that a 22-year sentence was appropriate for Leach, while defence lawyer David Milburn had urged a term of eight years be imposed.

He argued that Leach’s early guilty plea, just months after his August 2017 arrest, as well as Leach’s apology to the court, were mitigating factors in his client’s favour.

But Jamieson said the expression of remorse rang hollow when contrasted by some of the comments Leach made during the intercepted conversations.

When the mother of a customer called the dial-a-dope number complaining that her son had gotten sick from Leach’s product, he expressed no concern and commented that they had to change the line’s phone number and the delivery cars.

He also made racist and derogatory comments about his own drug-line workers who were of Persian descent, Jamieson said.

Leach also commented to an associate that he wanted to expand his drug line into Langley, but would need more guns to do so.

“The potential for violence is further enhanced by his comments on the intercepts as to his intention to expand to other places such as Langley and how he anticipates ‘a war’ coming,” Jamieson said. “I also think it is significant that the weapons Mr. Leach possessed were stored in a haphazard manner within his mother’s bedroom closet.”

Jamieson said Leach not only made his family vulnerable to arrest by stashing his drugs, cash and guns at their house, he put them at risk to be targeted by rivals.

“This collection of money, drugs and weapons in their home placed the family in jeopardy of being arrested and facing charges. All these circumstances show a significant disregard for the safety and wellbeing of his family,” Jamieson said.

“In my view his moral culpability is high, having regard to his pivotal and insulated role as the head of this well-organized business-like drug line, his preparedness to engage in threats of violence, his clear motivation being one of profit, his predatory relationship with addicts as cheap labour for his operation and his disregard for the safety and security of the public.”

Jamieson noted that Leach’s letters of support were from his mother Karen, 70, sister Rhonda, 40 and nephew Marcus, 20, all three of whom were arrested and charged along with the gang’s kingpin last August.

But with Friday’s sentencing, the charges against the other family members were stayed.

His mother cursed at police in the courtroom as she walked out before the proceedings ended. At one point, she shouted “lie” as Jamieson read his lengthy decision.

kbolan@postmedia.com

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A Federal Court judge has ruled that a United Nations gang associate should be allowed out of immigration detention pending his deportation to Iraq.

Chief Judge Paul Crampton sided with two immigration board members who decided earlier this spring that convicted gunman Aram Ali should be allowed to leave detention and live with his family in Calgary.

Both board members placed Ali, 32, on strict conditions “to adequately mitigate” any risk Ali poses to the public.

But Ali was never released following the immigration board rulings because the Canada Border Services Agency asked the Federal Court to review the decisions, arguing the board members had made a mistake and that Ali was still too dangerous to be allowed into the community.

Ali was convicted for shooting up a gang rival’s Range Rover outside Surrey’s T-Barz strip club in February 2009. The vehicle’s driver was struck, but the target of the shooting, Independent Soldier Tyler Hillock, escaped injury.

Ali testified that he did the shooting for a friend, high-ranking UN gangster Barzan Tilli-Choli. At the time, Ali was on bail on a drug trafficking charge.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge called him a mercenary for hire, and in December 2015 sentenced him to eight-and-a-half years, reduced to three-and-a-half after credit for his pretrial custody.

While serving his sentence, a deportation order was issued against him on the grounds of serious criminality. In March, another immigration board member ruled that he was too dangerous to stay in Canada, saying “the circumstances of Mr. Ali’s most recent offence are chilling.”

So when he reached his statutory release in April, Ali was handed over to the CBSA to await deportation.

That triggered a routine 48-hour detention review before immigration board member Laura Ko, who ordered his release on a $5,000 bond and several conditions.

The CBSA sought and got a stay of Ko’s ruling the same day at the Federal Court and he remained in custody.

Then on May 3, board member Michael McPhelan ordered Ali released again on more stringent conditions and two $5,000 bonds — one put up by his mother in Calgary and the second by a family friend.

Ali was still not released as the CBSA returned to the Federal Court.

Crampton heard the case May 25 via video conference and issued a ruling earlier this week.

He said that neither the Ko nor the McPhelan decisions was “unreasonable.”

Crampton said the conditions placed on Ali by both board members “would ensure that he would likely report for removal from Canada, if and when required to do so.”

And the conditions, including a curfew, “would collectively ensure that he would not pose a meaningful risk to the public,” Crampton said.

Ali was expected to be released Thursday.

kbolan@postmedia.com

blog: vancouversun.com/tag/real-scoop

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