Dutch Police Arrest 56 From Biker Gang. There Are Dutch Motorcycle Gangs? You Bet, and They Use Rocket Launchers To Rumble

The Dutch police arrested 56 members of a national motorcycle club in the capital Amsterdam.

Seems the gendarmes were looking to prevent Dutch bike gang Satudarah from taking on the Hells Angels.

There were indications that members of the Satudarah biker club had traveled to Amsterdam to challenge their rivals, according to a police statement.

“A possible confrontation between Satudarah and members of the Hells Angels had to be taken in account,” read a statement from Dutch authorities.

The bikers were slapped in irons this week for a “public order disturbance” and were all members of Dutch biker club Satudarah.

The club was, according to sources, established by bikers of Moluccan descent and boasts at least 10 chapters throughout the Netherlands.

The police were keeping any further information under wraps at the time of the arrests.

Tensions are believed to be ratcheting up between the club and the Hells Angels according to local reports.

For their part, the Hells Angels boast some 17 chapters within the Netherlands, and the gang has managed to avoid any attempts by Dutch prosecutors to have the group formally declared a criminal organization.

According to Dutch police spokesman,  Joost van Slobbe, the police believe “the balance between the biker clubs has been disturbed,” and that does sound ominous coming from a police officer.

Van Slobbe also said Dutch law enforcement wants to prevent a war between the gangs  “at all costs”.

He added that a dustup between the Hells Angels and rival gang, The Bandidos, left 11 dead and 95 injured during the  mid-1990s in Scandinavia, and that Dutch authorities are in no mood to see a reprise of that carnage in their country.

The so-called Nordic Biker Wars, which raged for months in Sweden, Finland and Norway, ultimately spread to Denmark and culminated in a bloody shoot-out at Copenhagen airport. The trouble started when a Hell’s Angel coming back from a convention in Helsinki killed in a hail of automatic rifle fire outside a hall by members of the Bandidos.

Since then the gangs have used rockets, yes, that’s rockets, to attack each others’  clubhouses using  arsenals of weapons stolen from army facilities in Denmark and Sweden.

Where Satudarah fits in, and how well they’re armed and how far they’re willing to go to mark their territory, remains to be seen…