RIVAL QUEBEC BIKE GANGS HOLD MYSTERY SUMMIT

Speculation Swirls About Truce Or Merger

QUEBEC CITY -- The two mortal enemies in Quebec's bloody biker gang war,
the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine, created a sensation yesterday when
they requisitioned a room in Quebec's main courthouse for a mystery summit
meeting.

Security officials and police kept an anxious watch on Room 409 on the
fourth floor of the downtown Palais de Justice as Maurice "Mom" Boucher,
head of the Hells Angels, and Frederic "Fred" Faucher, leader of the local
Rock Machine, met behind closed doors for an hour, each accompanied by
three lieutenants.

Crime reporters close to the biker gang scene speculated the two groups
involved in a six year war that has claimed more than 150 lives chose the
neutral ground of the courthouse to hammer out a truce following the recent
gun attack on Journal de Montreal crime reporter Michel Auger.

Embarrassed Quebec justice department officials, responsible for security
in the modern stone and glass building in the heart of the Quebec lower
town, said there's nothing they could have done to prevent the bikers
meeting in one of the courthouse rooms provided for lawyers meeting their
clients.

Lawyer Denis Bernier, who has clients linked to the Rock Machine, said he
didn't realize that a meeting with the Hells was being prepared when one of
his clients phoned him and asked him to find a place for a meeting.

Bernier, who showed the bikers into the room but didn't attend the meeting,
said the client asked him for a secure spot to hold a discussion.

"I thought the discussion was to be with me and then I saw those other
people arriving. They wanted a neutral place where there would be no danger
for anyone.

"A man (from the courthouse security detail) went into the room and met
everyone.

"He saw that everything was going ahead in an orderly manner."

Bernier said he had no idea what was discussed.

News of the meeting got out when two reporters on the courthouse beat
recognized Boucher leaving the building.

The group of eight took the elevator together to the ground floor at the
end of the meeting and then got into three cars after apparently parting
amicably.

Claude Poirier, a Montreal crime reporter with connections in the biker
milieu, said the gangs have been "feeling the heat" from the federal and
provincial governments and the police since the attack on Auger, now
recovering in hospital.

Talk of a new, tougher, anti gang law could have led the two groups to
decide to put a stop to their internecine warfare in order to attract less
attention, he said.

Yves Lavigne, author of several books on biker gangs, told Radio Canada
it's possible the two groups were meeting to carve up the drug territory in
the province.

Either they've reached an agreement on carving up the territory or some
members of the Rock Machine "have knifed their allies," Lavigne said. "If
that's what happened, there will be other problems."

Another crime reporter, Richard Desmarais, publisher of the crime and sex
weekly Allo Police, said the rival gangs may have "decided on a merger,
just like big companies do."