Gregory Wooley, 36, a former bodyguard to Hells Angels kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher, was arrested on Thursday

Gregory Wooley, 36, a former bodyguard to Hells Angels kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher, was arrested on Thursday in his prison cell in Kingston, Ont. Arrest of a jailed biker in a crackdown on an alleged drug-trafficking ring involving outlaw bikers and street gangs shows the strong ties between the two criminal elements, one expert said today.Police in Quebec and Ontario have described this week's Operation Axe as a major blow against the drug-trafficking operations of the Hells Angels and one of their affiliated street gangs known as the Syndicate.
The arrests serve to remind people that street gangs, which are plaguing several Canadian cities, are established players in the criminal world, said author Julian Sher.

"Street gangs are not about a couple of rough-and-tough kids having a bad night out on the town," said Sher, who has co-authored a book on the Hells Angels.

"This (police operation) shows how tightly connected some of the most powerful street gangs are to organized crime."
The Crown said Wooley, one of 54 people nabbed on Thursday and Friday, is believed to be the first person in Canada to be charged with gangsterism a second time.
If he is convicted on the same charge again, Wooley's sentence would run consecutively to his current one. He has been in prison since 2000.Others arraigned Friday include Jean Lavertue, 34, a former Canadian Olympic weightlifter who operated a Montreal gym. He was charged with drug trafficking and gangsterism.
Police also arrested Fernand Lauzon, 67, a man identified as the father of a Montreal police officer. He was charged with drug trafficking.The Crown handed over an imposing amount of evidence on five compact discs that include hundreds of thousands of wiretapped conversations, said prosecutor Francis Cloutier.The Hells Angels, which led a bloody turf war over drugs in the 1990s, are still very much a player despite the aftermath of Operation Springtime, another mass police sweep in 2001, Sher said.While more than 100 people were put behind bars after 2001, Sher said there are roughly the same number of Hells members on the streets in Quebec and that national membership is stable at about 450.

"But the Hells Angels are a lot less cocky than they were, they're not strutting, they're not as confident, they don't know where the next infiltration is coming from," said Sher.

Eighteen of the accused were granted bail on Friday under very strict conditions including a large cash deposit, strict curfews, and restricted use of pagers and cell phones except for work.But the majority were detained pending future bail hearings, including three men identified as high-ranking members of the Syndicate.Cloutier said at least 17 people face gangsterism charges."Principally, the charges are trafficking for the profit of a criminal organization – trafficking of drugs," Cloutier said.Two people are also charged with conspiracy to commit murder, but only one of them has been arrested.Montreal police said Friday that more people had been nabbed, bringing the total to 54, including six women. But not everyone had been arraigned.About 700 officers from a number of police forces took part in Operation Axe, which Montreal police said was one of the biggest ever carried out by the city forceThe raids netted $675,000 in cash as well as 25 guns and a number of bullet-proof vests. Significant quantities of cocaine, crack, ecstasy, marijuana and hashish were seized along with other drugs including speed, Viagra and steroids.

Paul Fontaine is charged with first degree murder for the 1997 killing of prison guard Pierre Rondeau

Paul Fontaine is charged with first degree murder for the 1997 killing of prison guard Pierre Rondeau. The guard was killed during an ambush of a prison bus in the east end of Montreal. The principal witness in the case, Stephane "Godasse" Gagne, was also involved in the crime, making it a difficult deliberation for the jury. Gagne pleaded guilty to charge of murder related to the death of Diane Lavigne, a prison security guard who was killed a few weeks earlier than Rondeau. He was able to plea bargin out of the charges for the murder of Rondeau. Initially it was believed the killing of the guards was intended to destabilize the justice system. However, it was revealed in court that the killings were also ordered to test the loyalty of Fontaine, Gagne and others.
The jury has been sequestered since Tuesday evening.

Paul Fontaine, 40, described in court as a full-patch member of the Hells Angels, is accused of being one of two shooters

Paul Fontaine, 40, described in court as a full-patch member of the Hells Angels, is accused of being one of two shooters who took part in the Sept. 8, 1997, attack that killed guard Pierre Rondeau. His partner of three years, Robert Corriveau, was also targeted in the shooting but was not struck.The other shooter was Stéphane (Godasse) Gagné, a Hells Angels underling who later turned informant, prosecutor Randall Richmond told the jury.Richmond said Gagné, who is still behind bars, will testify during the trial and characterized him as the most important witness because he is the only one who can identify Fontaine as the other shooter.With his receding hairline and double chin, and dressed in a checked dress shirt and striped tie, Fontaine looked more like a businessman than a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang as he sat in the prisoner's dock.The seven women and five men of the jury are expected to hear evidence until the end of January. More than 140 witnesses are expected to testify in the first-degree murder trial at the Montreal courthouse.
In his opening remarks, Richmond said Rondeau and Corriveau were targeted simply because they were prison guards."It was a conspiracy to kill guards, any guards - not specifically Mr. Rondeau and Mr. Corriveau," Richmond said.Fontaine was part of the conspiracy along with Gagné and André Tousignant, a Hells Angel who was killed in 1998.All three were operating under the orders of Hells Angels leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher, Richmond said, adding the gang boss planned to also have judges, police officers and prosecutors killed as part of a plan to destabilize the justice system. Boucher figured it would prevent his underlings from becoming informants because the Crown would never want to make a deal with someone who killed a prison guard, Richmond said."But he was wrong."
Fontaine went into hiding after Rondeau was killed, Richmond told the jury, and stayed under the radar until 2004 when he was discovered living under an assumed identity.He recalled how the day he and his partner were attacked seemed like any other until they stopped at an intersection in Rivière des Prairies while on their way to a detention centre to pick up inmates for a routine transport to the Montreal courthouse.Corriveau shot only a few very quick glances in Fontaine's direction while he testified.Corriveau said he saw a man in dark clothing stand in front of the guards' blue modified school bus, his arms resting on the hood. The shooter used both hands to point his gun at them. The next thing he saw, Corriveau said, was Rondeau get shot while he sat in the driver's seat."I saw the impact (of the bullets). He turned toward me as he was struck," said Corriveau, who was sitting in the front passenger seat."I was prepared to die. It makes no sense but I was," Corriveau said, adding that everything happened very quickly.The jury saw a photo that showed several shots were fired into the windshield of the bus and into the door of the bus, near where Corriveau sat, but he was not struck.