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Notorious bikie gang member being deported to NZ

Author
news.com.au,
Publish Date
Sun, 14 Apr 2019, 1:14PM
Emil Tangaroa will be deported, leaving his fiance and three children in Australia.
Emil Tangaroa will be deported, leaving his fiance and three children in Australia.

Notorious bikie gang member being deported to NZ

Author
news.com.au,
Publish Date
Sun, 14 Apr 2019, 1:14PM

A former 'baby bikie' involved in an infamous gang brawl — and a violent home invasion in which he terrorised a 13-year-old boy — is being deported from Australia back to New Zealand, leaving his fiancee and three children behind.

Ex-Bandido bikie Emil Tangaroa, 32, was arrested by Border Force officials at Lotus Glen prison in north Queensland prison last week after being released on parole.

He is in immigration detention and set to be deported to his native New Zealand this week — the latest of about 200 foreign-born bikies to be kicked out of Australia in the past 18 months.

The heavily-tattooed Tangaroa was among 27 bikies involved in the 2014 Broadbeach bikie brawl in which a "lynch mob" of Bandidos members stormed a restaurant in the busy Gold Coast dining precinct hunting a gang rival.

Police were forced to deploy their tasers as brawling bikies spilt out of the venue and onto the footpath in front of terrified diners, including families.

The Bandidos later laid siege to Southport police station, demanding the release of arrested gang members, in a night of violence that ushered in the-then Newman Government's harsh bikie laws.

Tangaroa was sentenced to 150 hours community service after pleading guilty to rioting.

But he was back in strife just over a year later when he was one of three Bandidos arrested over a violent home invasion in Atherton in January 2015.

Tangaroa and co-accused Benjamin Wright bashed and demanded cash and drug contacts from a man while another accomplice, David Gray, stood over the victim's 13-year-old son.

Cairns Supreme Court judge Jim Henry slammed the attack as "despicable and cowardly".

"They were real tough guys doing this in front of the man's son, real heroes," he said.

In August 2016, Tangaroa was sentenced to four years' jail after pleading guilty to extortion and assault occasioning bodily harm while armed or in company.

Earlier this week, Tangaroa — who has been in Australia since he was a teenager — posted a Facebook photo of himself apparently in immigration detention.

"Thankyou to my wonderful special lady that stuck by me through the good and the bad love you baby xxxxoooooxxxxxoo," he wrote in a message to his fiancee, the mother of two of his three children, aged 2, 8 and 10.

He will become the second Bandido bikie involved in the Broadbeach brawl to be deported to New Zealand, after fellow rioter Jim David Thacker was booted out of Australia last August.

"The Government's been very clear over a long period of time now that we are not going to tolerate criminals in our country who are here as non-citizens and committing serious crimes against Australian citizens," Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said at the time.

BIKIES SENT PACKING FROM AUSTRALIA

  • June 2014: Rebels national president Alex Vella has his visa cancelled while visiting family in Malta. Later fails in High Court appeal.
  • National president of the Rebels motorcycle bikie gang, Alex Vella, wasn't allowed to return from Malta.
  • August 2016: Rebels bikie Shane Martin, father of AFL star Dustin Martin, deported to NZ after committing crimes including assault and drug trafficking. Dustin Martin's father Shane was sent back to NZ.
  • November 2017: Finks bikie enforcer Jesse Johnston deported to NZ after being refused entry to Bali and sent back to Australia.
  • August 2018: Broadbeach bikie brawl participant, Bandidos gang member Jim Thacker, deported to NZ after his visa cancelled on character grounds.
  • April 2019: Broadbeach bikie brawl participant and Bandido Emil Tangaroa to be deported to NZ after serving jail time for violent Atherton home invasion in which a 13-year-old boy terrorised.
  • April 2019: Former senior Bandido John Pennie — jailed for drug possession and wilful destruction of evidence — to be deported to Ireland after losing appeal against visa cancellation.

 

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