HUNTER: Didn't bikers and gangsters used to be patriotic?
· Toronto Sun
During the 1995 Quebec referendum, a member of the Hells Angels told a Montreal reporter that the biker gang was dead set against separation.
“It’s bad for business,” the burly biker sensibly replied.
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That interaction reminded me of the Second World War, when organized crime chipped in to clear out Nazi saboteurs on the docks of New York City. Or when they greased the wheels for the invasion of Sicily. They were criminals, the Goodfellas later conceded, but they weren’t traitors.
That doesn’t sound much like Hells Angel and Wolfpack gangster Damion Ryan.
According to U.S. prosecutors, the 45-year-old Vancouver native orchestrated a (ultimately foiled) scheme to ice two Iranian dissidents who lived in Maryland. According to the indictment, Ryan was allegedly working for Iranian drug kingpin Naji Zindashti.
Zindashti is an interesting piece of work. According to the feds, he was acting as a proxy for the Iranian government when he allegedly recruited Ryan. Cops say Ryan put together the hit team and they would take the dissidents out for $350,000 U.S. (nearly $500,000 Canadian) along with $20,000 in expenses.
The Revolutionary Guards are now using criminals like Ryan, Zindashti — nestled on the FBI’s Most Wanted List — and the Mexican cartels to give them deniability.
“These grey zone activities demonstrate how extraterritorial targeting transcends traditional state-sponsored violence,” the BBC reported. “By leveraging criminal networks like the Thieves-in-Law and utilizing intermediaries such as Naji Sharifi Zindashti, the Iranian regime constructs intricate operational layers that obfuscate direct state responsibility while effectively neutralizing perceived threats abroad.”
And somehow, into this mix of international intrigue, stumbles Damion Ryan, currently up to his eyeballs in fecal matter. A longtime left coast hood, he escaped a murder attempt at the Vancouver Airport in 2015.
Ryan has also been charged in the U.S. on the botched Iranian hit job. He has been convicted of trafficking cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl in Manitoba, and he was named as a defendant in a B.C. government lawsuit targeting three Hells Angels clubhouses.
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The OPP fittingly charged Ryan on April Fool’s Day in connection with the 2021 Bolton murder of Giovanni Costa, 65. His son, Michael, was the true target of the conspiracy and survived two attempts on his life.
It’s really quite a dance card. On the Bolton slaying, he’s in an Ottawa courtroom on April 13, he has a drug conspiracy sentencing in Winnipeg on May 6 (he was convicted in December) and cops say the latest charges to bury him are attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder in 2020 and 2021.
Two others charged in the Bolton hit, Filmon Fesshaghirgis, 27, and Waheed Barakziye, 48, remain fugitives. None of the charges against Ryan has been proven in court.
But the murderous marriage between the Islamic Republic, its proxies and organized crime remains worrisome. And the trend will no doubt accelerate as a result of the war raging in the Middle East
Labour Peer Kevan Jones told The Guardian that increasingly, Iran uses hired hands to do its dirty work.
“They are doing this through organized crime and through individuals by paying them and that’s what it is more likely to be here,” Jones said.
Famed mob visionary Charles “Lucky” Luciano once observed, “no good money or bad money, only money.” But he, like his childhood friend and fellow gangster, Meyer Lansky were no traitors.
Nor were the Hells Angels on the eve of the 1995 referendum.
Damion Ryan appears to be an entirely different kettle of fish.