DRUGS DROVE ANGELS' EXPANSION, CROWN SAYS

Bikers' Trial Told Gang Wanted to Tighten Hold on Trade After Rivals
Entered Ontario

BARRIE, ONT. -- It was all about drugs, notably cocaine. When Quebec's
Hells Angels expanded into Ontario four years ago, their chief purpose
was to strengthen their grip on the narcotics trade, and two men now
on trial were part of that consolidation.

That was the broad picture Crown attorney Graeme Cameron painted in
court yesterday as he outlined the key component of his indictment
against two bikers charged in what would otherwise be a
run-of-the-mill allegation of extortion.

Mr. Cameron described the Hells Angels as a ruthless, tightly knit
clan, organized locally, nationally and internationally, with a long
track record of violence and drug trafficking. (Worldwide, there are
upward of 2,500 Hells Angels and close associates. About 500 are in
Canada, roughly half of them in Ontario.)

"An attack against one member will always be treated as an attack
against the group," he said.

Alluding to the organization's rules of membership, "They are all
business reasons," the prosecutor said. "They are totally unrelated to
driving motorcycles."

On trial are Steven (Tiger) Lindsay and Raymond Bonner, both
full-patch members of the Hells Angels chapter in Woodbridge, north of
Toronto. The pair are accused of trying to extort $75,000 from a
Barrie-area businessman who, through another man, sold them faulty
high-tech equipment designed to allow television watchers to steal
satellite signals.

But they are also charged under Canada's recently revised anti-gang
legislation, which creates an additional offence where it can be shown
that a crime is "for the benefit of, at the direction of or in
association with" an identified criminal group of three people or more.

Yesterday, Mr. Cameron said his case rests on the "in association
with" clause, indicating the alleged shakedown was not directly on
behalf of the Angels.

Boxes crammed with court documents, intelligence reports, police notes
and wiretap transcripts were entered as exhibits in what could be a
months-long trial. The package also included photographs of clubhouses
and such notorious Hells Angels as Maurice (Mom) Boucher, Walter
(Nurget) Stadnick and Donald (Pup) Stockford, all serving long prison
terms in Quebec for murder, attempted murder and drug offences.

Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Bonner, former Para-Dice Riders who "patched over"
to the Hells Angels in December of 2000, along with more than 160
other Ontario bikers, gazed at the photos with evident interest.

The proceedings could yet be aborted. Mr. Lindsay intends to change
his plea this week to guilty, which would allow the defence to argue
that the charges arose as a result of police entrapment.

If Madam Justice Michelle Fuerst of Ontario Superior Court hears and
accepts that argument before the normal trial process is completed,
the extortion charge will be stayed and the organized-crime part of
the indictment will disappear with it.

In the meantime, Mr. Cameron's purpose is twofold: to demonstrate that
the Hells Angels is a criminal organization, soaked in violence and
drugs, and that Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Bonner are inseparable parts of
it.

The Angels' drug profits have been huge, he said. When a Montreal drug
outlet was shut down a few weeks after Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Bonner
joined the organization, police estimated that $100-million worth of
cocaine and hashish had passed through it.

Nor were the Angels just selling drugs, Mr. Cameron
said.

"The evidence will show that the Hells Angels, through various means,
would import cocaine into Quebec."

The catalyst for the Ontario "patchover," he said, was a similar move
that month by another motorcycle gang, the U.S.-based Bandidos.

When two Bandidos chapters were set up in Ontario and three in Quebec
- -- the first such foothold in Canada -- the Hells Angels were
perturbed, he said. As with the Angels' bloody war in Quebec with the
rival Rock Machine, which claimed more than 150 lives from 1995 to
2000, the fear was that their drug profits would be diluted.

That concern triggered a flurry of ultimately successful merger
negotiations between the Hells Angels and Ontario's assorted outlaw
biker gangs, Mr. Cameron said.

When police videotaped the busloads of bikers entering the Sorel,
Que., clubhouse where the ceremony took place, Mr. Lindsay and Mr.
Bonner went in as Para-Dice Riders.

When they exited, they were Hells Angels. Mr. Lindsay emerged a
full-patch member; Mr. Bonner secured that status a few months later.