Jackie Chan investigated over Triad gang attacks

Jackie Chan at the premiere of CZ12 in Hong Kong. Photo/AP

Jackie Chan will be investigated by Hong Kong police after claiming to have confronted Triad gang members with guns and grenades.

The Rush Hour star told the Guangzhou-based Southern People Weekly magazine he had been "bullied" by triads, or the Chinese organised crime societies, that were once powerful and thrived in the Asian financial hub.

"In the past, when they bullied me. I hid in the United States. They opened fire at me once I got off the aeroplane," Hong Kong's South China Morning Post quoted him as saying in the magazine interview published last week.

"From that moment on, I needed to carry a gun every day when I went out," said the Hong Kong-born star, who has played a hero cop that took on crime lords in his hugely popular Cantonese crime action film series Police Story.

The 58-year-old actor said he had to confront a gang of 20 members once with guns when the group surrounded him with knives at a Hong Kong eatery.

"I told them they had been going too far and that I had been hiding from them. Later on, I confronted them with two guns and six grenades," he said, without saying when the incident occurred or how it ended.

A Hong Kong police spokeswoman said they will probe Chan's comments but stopped short of saying whether they will question him.

"We will see what he has said in the interview first," the spokeswoman said.

Chan suggested in the same interview that protest in the semi-autonomous Hong Kong that was returned to Beijing in 1997 should be restricted, sparking criticism from activists and politicians.

- AFP