Mass Biker Defection Has Berlin Bracing for Violence

A number of Bandidos in Berlin have turned their back on their club and defected to the local Hell's Angels chapter. Police are worried about a fresh outbreak of violence.

There has never been a shortage of brutality between the biker gangs Bandidos and Hell's Angels. But after 70 members of a Berlin club defected to their erstwhile rivals, police in the German capital are bracing for violence.

It's only been a few months since a group of Bandidos allegedly ambushed and assaulted a group of Hell's Angels, their arch-enemies in the biker gang world, in Finowfurt, a small town northeast of Berlin. Investigators and prosecutors say that at least half a dozen Berlin-based Banditos chased down a group of Hell's Angels from the city, resulting in a savage fight.

When all was said and done, a gravely wounded Hell's Angels hanger-on named Enrico K. was lying on the street -- with an axe in his leg. When the police questioned him about what had happened, he attributed his gruesome wound to "a traffic accident." In the biker system of values, there have always been two constants. One is the sacred "code of silence." The other is the hatred for enemy biker clubs. As such, a recent development in the Berlin biker scene -- first reported by SPIEGEL TV and SPIEGEL ONLINE on Wednesday -- is as unprecedented as it is explosive.
A total of 76 members and supporters of "Centro," as the Berlin chapter of the Bandidos is known, are reportedly trying to defect to the Hell's Angels camp. Investigators say the would-be defectors have already appeared in public wearing brand-new red-and-white Hell's Angels garb, and that they have seen André S., the head of the local Hell's Angels club, speaking with members of the rival club. The 45-year-old S. was recently stabbed -- likely by Bandidos.

Recent months have seen an uptick in violence between the rival motorcycle gangs -- particularly in Berlin, the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein and eastern Germany. And the attacks have been escalating, from knife assaults to shootings to explosives. The reason: the Bandidos have managed to recruit hundreds of young men, many of them from immigrant families in Germany's east, and put the Hell's Angels on the defensive.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,675916,00.html