Tuesday, 27 December 2022

WORLD’S MOST WANTED

 


 Recently I happened to read an article about Interpol, the police who fight international crime. When a person commits a crime in a country but is not found in that same place, the local authorities send a report to Interpol. The criminal becomes a fugitive and is considered a menace to the world.

So, I made a research about who are (or were)  the most wanted fugitives in the world because I think it’s important to know who can potentially hide among us.

Since there are so many, I had to pick  up a few and I decided to write about 5 of them.

 


 

1. The last of Cosa Nostra: Matteo Messina Denaro

After the capture in 2006 of the last head of the Italian mafia Bernardo Provenzano, Denaro has become its last leader. But he’s been hiding since 1993: no one has a clue about where he could be. We have nothing that helps his capture: no fingerprints, no voice recordings and his last picture dates back to the 90s. The only thing we have is an identikit based on the information of the last people who saw him.

Denaro, nicknamed Diabolic, is known for his luxurious life: he loves art, reading, expensive clothes, Rolex watches and fancy cars. He is also said to be very handsome and talented: he’s quite different from the typical rural Italian mafia boss.

In 2002, he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for the role he had in the bombing in Via d’Amelio.

He’s believed to hide in Sicily, in Castelvetrano, his native place. However, investigators are quite sure that he went abroad to have major plastic surgery to his face and fingerprints and he would now be unrecognizable.

 

2. Felicien Kabuga, the financer behind the Rwanda genocide

 

Though he was arrested in France in 2020, I still decided to put him in this list because he’s been a fugitive for 23 years.

Kabuga was the most wanted man in Africa and is considered responsible for one of the world’s most atrocious genocide happened in Rwanda in 1994.

He was a cruel extremist blinded by race hatred. However, he was very close to the president of Rwanda, Habyarimana,  in fact, he was his financer.

Together with other extremists, Kabuga raised money and funds to prepare and conduct the massacre. He also ran a radio station, a strong means of propaganda that was used to incite violence against Tutsi, a minority in Rwanda.

 


 

3. JoaquìnGuzmàn, or El Chapo

 

After escaping prison twice, he was eventually captured in 2016. He managed to escape prisons because of his corrupting power on guards. He used to organise parties with his friends, received prostitutes as visitors and, through couriers and cellphones, he kept directing and controlling the activity of his organisation. They say  he controlled prison so widely that he could have escaped from the main door.

Born of a poor family, Guzmàn had to face physical abuse from his father, who introduced him to the world of drug trade by teaching him to cultivate marijuana.

Then, he became the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime organisation, named after his poor native place, where he had his commercial base. He’s considered to have been one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world: his patrimony amounts to 14 billion dollars.

The Sinaloa Cartel monitored drug traffic to the US, where cocaine was becoming more and more popular. Traitors, enemies, everyone who hindered his rise,  were all killed with atrocious cruelty.

 

4. Dawood Ibrahim: the head of Indian crime network
 

He’s India’s most wanted man. He’s a drug dealer, boss of the Indian mafia and a terrorist. Ibrahim is the head of an Indian crime organisation called D-Company, founded in Mumbai in the late 70s. The organisation is involved in everything from drug traffic to contract killing in Pakistan, India and the United Arab Emirates. According to investigators, the D-Company uses the same smuggling pathways as al-Qaeda and perhaps they even worked together.

His name is connected to several serious terrorist attacks, like the one in Mumbai in 1993, which killed 257 people and wounded more than 700. He’s said to be the mind behind the attack since he knew Mumbai very well: there was the place where he began his rise to international crime.

 

5. Semion Mogilevich, the Brainy Don

 

Born Ukrainian, he’s now a citizen of four different countries: Russia, Israel, Greece and Hungary. He is believed to be the ultimate “boss of the bosses” of Russian mafia organizations all over the world. He’s considered as the most dangerous criminal in the world. Some believe that he has links with the ex-mayor of Moscow and with the current Russian president Vladimir Putin.

He's currently charged for extortion, weapons and drug trafficking, contract murders, money laundering and prostitution on an international scale.

In 2009 Mogilevich was arrested for tax evasion and then released because the charge against him wasn’t a public menace. He is now living freely in Moscow, was removed from the FBI’s most wanted list because he lives in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the USA,  and he’s no longer considered an immediate threat to the community. Although he’s been removed from the list, he still is under investigation for an ultimate arrest.

MARIA D., 5sc

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