Australian bikies’ new deadly ISIS weapon as turf wars intensify

It’s the stuff you see on battlefields and now, with help from the AN0M app sting, police are seizing rifles off Aussie bikies used by IS. Listen to the Bikies Inc podcast.

Bikie gangs are arming themselves with assault rifles used by Islamic State terrorists as police brace for bloody turf wars.

3D printed submachine guns, silencers and homemade handguns are among the cache of weapons seized by authorities as the number of illegal guns confiscated from bikies doubled in a year, latest figures reveal.

The crackdown comes amid a spate of shootings across the country, including the attack at a Sydney gym on Comanchero boss Tarek Zahed and his brother Omar where 20 shots were fired in 20 seconds from a modified pistol, and the shooting of former Mongol Suleiman ‘Sam’ Abdulrahim at a Melbourne funeral.

Detective Superintendent Jason McArthur, of the AFP’s National Anti-Gangs Squad, said he was concerned about the guns that were in the hands of bikies.

“We found a cache of weapons, which included a Chinese copy of an AK 47 rifle …. the kind of weapon that would be used by the Islamic State, the kind of weapon that’s designed purely for the battlefield,” he told the Bikies Inc podcast.

Tarek Zahed (right) and his brother Omar Zahed. Picture: Supplied

An example of a 3D printed gun seized by NSW Police. Picture: Supplied

LISTEN TO EPISODE 4 OF THE PODCAST BELOW:

“A 30-round magazine, fully automatic and those ones for what we would term as a seven-six-two short, a 7.62mm mm military round. It’s probably as bad as you can get.”

Police have stepped up their efforts to remove guns off bikies, with intelligence from the AN0M app sting helping them find hidden stashes of weapons.

Fighters from the al-Qaida linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) marching in Raqqa, Syria. Picture: AP

More than 12,000 criminals were on the app because they thought it was encrypted, however it was secretly monitored by Australian Federal Police and the FBI.

Intercepted messages revealed how bikies plotted to attack each other, which police said debunked the myth of the “bikie brotherhood”.

Det Supt McArthur said there was no “brotherhood” among bikies, who were now also likely to be working with international drug lords from Mexican and Asian cartels.

“In the last 10 to 15 years, that brotherhood has just been shown to be absolutely not applicable anymore,” he said.

Michael Phelan, chief executive of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, also told the podcast: “The brotherhood thing is just a myth. At the end of the day, they are just a group of criminals that work together every now and again and human life and the individuals that work for them are expendable.”

Det Supt McArthur revealed new details of how a plot to shoot up a suburban cafe, with a gunman planning to fire from the back of a motorcycle, was foiled.

“I can’t overstate the significance of a fully automatic military grade assault rifle in the hands of an arm OMCG member,” Det Supt McArthur said.

He said the cafe plot carried serious risk to the public.

“We’re talking about a weapon that you know that you pull the trigger and 30 rounds a second towards unsuspecting people,” he said.

“The cafe itself could be filled with anyone, you know, children, and that did not factor into any of that planning at all. They just wanted to make a statement.”

More than 800 people were arrested as a result of the information gleaned from the AN0M app, including dozens of Comanchero bikies.

Originally published as Australian bikies’ new deadly ISIS weapon as turf wars intensify