HELLS ANGELS, ROCK MACHINE LEADERS ALL BEHIND BARS

225 Police Officers Raid 34 Locations In Central Quebec

Southam Newspapers; CP

Mere weeks after staging a very public truce, the top-ranking chieftains in
Quebec's biker war are behind bars.

At 6 a.m., Wednesday, 225 police officers conducted 34 raids in the Quebec
City area. They arrested 15 people, including Rock Machine boss Frederic
Faucher and Marcel Demers, founder of the Quebec City chapter.

They also arrested three of the gang's main drug couriers, and two major
lieutenants.

The raids capped a 13-month undercover investigation and were aimed at
shutting down the gang's trafficking of cocaine, ecstasy and PCP.

"This ought to shake the temple's foundations a little bit," said Sgt.
Denis Alain of Quebec City's Integrated Regional Task Force on organized
crime. "It's a significant blow to the Quebec City Rock Machine."

Faucher and Demers and Hells Angels leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher are now
all behind bars.

Boucher is awaiting a re-trial of first-degree murder charges from 1997
involving the deaths of two prison guards.

Boucher was acquitted of the charges in 1998, but a three-judge panel
quashed the acquittal and Boucher was arrested in October. He is due to
appear in court Jan. 8.

The arrest will be particularly embarrassing for Faucher, who police
believe was instrumental in creating the formal alliance between the Rock
Machine and the Bandidos, a Texas-based outlaw biker club which has feuded
with the Hells Angels since it was founded in 1966.

"He just joined a new company last week," said Capt. Paul Laplante.

American Bandidos leaders met with their Rock Machine counterparts in a
Toronto hotel Friday and held a short ceremony to formalize the new
partnership.

"Now when we talk about the Rock Machine, we talk in the past tense. Since
Dec. 1, they have become Bandidos. There are two probationary chapters in
Quebec, one in Montreal, one in Quebec City, and there are rumours of one
more in the province before long," Alain said.

The Rock Machine and Hells Angels have been engaged in a fierce six-year
turf war over the province's drug trade, a conflict that has left nearly
200 people dead.

Faucher and Boucher met at a restaurant in October to discuss a truce.

At that time it was believed the two sides had patched up their
differences, but police fear another flareup since the Rock Machine joined
forces with the Bandidos.

Both the Bandidos and the Hells Angels have gone global, and are able to
maintain uneasy truces in most of the countries where they co-exist, police
say.

"The only place in the world where there's an active biker war is right
here in Quebec, " said a police officer.