HELLS ANGEL DENIED STATUTORY RELEASE

Professed His Loyalty To Biker Gang At Hearing

A longtime member of the Hells Angels has been denied statutory
release from prison because of his loyalty to the biker gang and
because he is alleged to still be doing business while behind bars.

Claude Giguere, 45, was one of several Hells Angels arrested in
Operation Springtime 2001, the police investigation that shut down the
gang's elite Nomads chapter.

While he wasn't a member of the Nomads, Giguere was, and still is, a
member of the gang's Trois Rivieres chapter. He was snared in the 2001
roundup because investigators found evidence he purchased large
quantities of cocaine and hashish from the Nomads' highly organized
drug-trafficking empire.

When police sorted out the Nomads' coded accounting software, they
linked Giguere to an account labelled "Macho," his Hells Angels nickname.

Within months of his arrest, Giguere pleaded guilty to drug
trafficking and gangsterism. He received an eight-year sentence, one
of the longest among the 51 people linked to the Nomads chapter
through its accounting.

But it appears Giguere followed the "business as usual" motto even
while serving time for the past five years.

According to a National Parole Board report released this week,
Giguere "co-ordinated and supervised" the entry of drugs into a
penitentiary where he was held until 2003. The drugs were smuggled in
through the penitentiary's laundry area by inmates indebted to Giguere.

Giguere was also suspected of having accomplices send him drugs packed
in arrows and tennis balls that were tossed on to the grounds of the
penitentiary.

This summer, Correctional Service Canada alleged Giguere was smuggling
large quantities of cigarettes into his penitentiary through his work
at its arts and crafts shop.

The parole board report does not name the prisons.

At his hearing last week, Giguere told the three parole commissioners
who heard his case that he intends to remain a Hells Angel when he is
released.

The commissioners decided that if Giguere maintains his affiliation
with the gang, he is at high risk of reoffending before his sentence
ends in 2009. Giguere was ordered to remain incarcerated beyond his
statutory release date, Feb. 23, 2007, the two-thirds mark of his sentence.

Less than five per cent of inmates are kept behind bars beyond their
statutory release date.

The parole board is required to review the decision within a year.