BIKER TRUCE 'JUST AS DANGEROUS' TO QUEBEC

Gang Leaders' Summit In Court Building Deplored

QUEBEC CITY - Public Security Minister Serge Menard has vowed Quebec will
"maintain the pressure" on criminal biker gangs despite a truce rumoured to
have been struck by the warring Hells Angels and Rock Machine.

Menard's statement came as the Parti Quebecois government, justice
officials and the legal community scrambled to wash their hands of any
responsibility for the use of a room in the Quebec courthouse for Tuesday's
summit between the rival gang leaders.

"This will in no way diminish the pressure we are maintaining to eliminate,
if possible, those dangerous groups," Menard said.

Callers on radio and television open-line shows, journalists and
independent legal experts voiced outrage that Maurice (Mom) Boucher, head
of the Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels, and Frederic (Fred) Faucher,
leader of the Rock Machine - each accompanied by three lieutenants - were
able to commandeer a room on the fourth floor of the Palais de justice for
the one-hour meeting.

The Quebec Bar Association announced that the conduct of Denis Bernier, the
lawyer who led the two groups to the room, is being investigated.

Bernier, who was busy at the courthouse yesterday defending Jean-Judes
Faucher, brother of the Rock Machine leader, on drug and weapons charges,
claims he knew nothing of the summit with the Hells when a client asked him
to find a meeting room.

The lawyer, who has represented other members of the Rock Machine in the
past, said his clients dispatched him to the front door of the Palais to
welcome Mom Boucher, then told him to wait outside Room 409 while the two
groups talked.

Bombarded with questions before and after the weekly PQ cabinet meeting,
both Menard and his colleague, Justice Minister Linda Goupil, said that the
tougher anti-gang law they are calling on Ottawa to pass - making mere
membership in a criminal gang a crime - would have permitted police
intervention Tuesday.

Menard, a leading criminal defence lawyer before entering politics in 1994,
said no one should be duped by reports, true or false, that the two warring
factions - blamed for more than 150 deaths in the past six years - have
made peace.

"These are people prepared to kill to make money," he said. "They're just
as dangerous whether they're united or divided. And even if they stop
fighting among themselves, they'll continue to commit other crimes which
will claim innocent victims."

Menard said the courtroom constables who mounted guard outside the meeting
room, one armed with an MP-5 rifle, had no legal authority to frisk the
bikers or even demand their identity.

Legally, the officers would need reasonable grounds to suppose a criminal
act was being committed in order to intervene, he said.

"The fact that these people can show off in public facilitates their
intimidation, their recruitment and their criminal activity," he said.

"The arrogance of the bikers has reached the limit," said the main headline
on page one of Quebec's Le Soleil daily.

"Hells-Rock summit right in the courthouse," said the tabloid Journal de
Quebec.

One caller on Radio-Canada's Le Midi Quinze noon-hour show suggested the
bikers might decide to meet next at Quebec's National Assembly. Another
said the biker summit reduced the justice system to "buffoonery."

Justice minister Goupil told reporters, in a separate media scrum, even the
fact that the bikers broke courthouse rules by smoking on premises and
reports that they parked vehicles outside illegally, without being
ticketed, should be investigated.

All lawyers can use courthouse witness rooms but they were never intended
for "working meetings" of criminal groups, she said.