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The death of Osama bin Laden offers a perfect opportunity to revisit the list of the World's Most Wanted. So who still makes it?
Jon Henley
The Guardian, Wednesday 4 May 2011
He wasn't the World's Most Wanted Man. Officially, at least, there's no such thing. But when Osama bin Laden died from a shot to the head and another to the chest sometime between midnight and 1.30am local time on Monday, the man who, in the popular western imagination, held arguably the best – and certainly the best-publicised – claim to be regarded as such left behind him something of a conundrum for those who compile such lists: who could replace him?
It's not such a straightforward question. Leaving aside such niceties as one man's evil terrorist mastermind being another man's blessed freedom fighter, attempting to place in order of importance crimes on the kind of scale that might warrant inclusion in a Top 10 of global iniquity is a task fraught with difficulties. How do you measure a Serbian ethnic cleanser against an American serial killer, dismemberer and necrophile; a Mexican drugs baron against a Rwandan genocide-merchant?
The new 10 Most Wanted List
1 JoaquÃn 'El Chapo' Guzmán Mexican drug lord
JoaquÃn Guzmán. Photograph: *******
"El Chapo" or "Shorty" (he stands 5ft 6in tall) heads an international drug trafficking organisation, the Sinaloa Cartel, and became Mexico's top drug kingpin in 2003 after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cárdenas of the Gulf Cartel. Appears simultaneously on Forbes's lists of the world's most powerful, most wealthy and most wanted men. Ruthless and determined, Guzmán has succeeded in turning Ciudad Juárez, a strategic smuggling point that overlooks El Paso, Texas, into one of the murder capitals of the world through mind-numbingly brutal battles against both the Gulf and La Linea cartels, leaving thousands dead. A faction from La Linea has recently defected to Shorty's side; a local street gang, the Mexicles, has sub-contracted its services in killing, kidnapping, drug dealing and extorting; and even elements of the police and army seem to have thrown their lot in with him. Sinaloa smuggles many tonnes of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico into the United States, and is also heavily involved in Mexican methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin.
2 Dawood Ibrahim Head of Indian crime network
Dawood Ibrahim, Indian gangster.
The most wanted man in India heads up a 5,000-strong organised crime network called the D-Company that is involved in everything from drugs trafficking to contract killing in Pakistan, India and the UAE. Currently on the Interpol wanted list for organised crime and counterfeiting, besides association with al-Qaida. According to Washington, Ibrahim uses the same smuggling routes as al-Qaida and has worked with both the mother organisation and its offshoot Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. He is also suspected in the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people and wounded 713. Like Bin Laden, Ibrahim may well be based in Pakistan.
Read more:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...ted-list/print
Jon Henley
The Guardian, Wednesday 4 May 2011
He wasn't the World's Most Wanted Man. Officially, at least, there's no such thing. But when Osama bin Laden died from a shot to the head and another to the chest sometime between midnight and 1.30am local time on Monday, the man who, in the popular western imagination, held arguably the best – and certainly the best-publicised – claim to be regarded as such left behind him something of a conundrum for those who compile such lists: who could replace him?
It's not such a straightforward question. Leaving aside such niceties as one man's evil terrorist mastermind being another man's blessed freedom fighter, attempting to place in order of importance crimes on the kind of scale that might warrant inclusion in a Top 10 of global iniquity is a task fraught with difficulties. How do you measure a Serbian ethnic cleanser against an American serial killer, dismemberer and necrophile; a Mexican drugs baron against a Rwandan genocide-merchant?
The new 10 Most Wanted List
1 JoaquÃn 'El Chapo' Guzmán Mexican drug lord
JoaquÃn Guzmán. Photograph: *******
"El Chapo" or "Shorty" (he stands 5ft 6in tall) heads an international drug trafficking organisation, the Sinaloa Cartel, and became Mexico's top drug kingpin in 2003 after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cárdenas of the Gulf Cartel. Appears simultaneously on Forbes's lists of the world's most powerful, most wealthy and most wanted men. Ruthless and determined, Guzmán has succeeded in turning Ciudad Juárez, a strategic smuggling point that overlooks El Paso, Texas, into one of the murder capitals of the world through mind-numbingly brutal battles against both the Gulf and La Linea cartels, leaving thousands dead. A faction from La Linea has recently defected to Shorty's side; a local street gang, the Mexicles, has sub-contracted its services in killing, kidnapping, drug dealing and extorting; and even elements of the police and army seem to have thrown their lot in with him. Sinaloa smuggles many tonnes of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico into the United States, and is also heavily involved in Mexican methamphetamine, marijuana and heroin.
2 Dawood Ibrahim Head of Indian crime network
Dawood Ibrahim, Indian gangster.
The most wanted man in India heads up a 5,000-strong organised crime network called the D-Company that is involved in everything from drugs trafficking to contract killing in Pakistan, India and the UAE. Currently on the Interpol wanted list for organised crime and counterfeiting, besides association with al-Qaida. According to Washington, Ibrahim uses the same smuggling routes as al-Qaida and has worked with both the mother organisation and its offshoot Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. He is also suspected in the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people and wounded 713. Like Bin Laden, Ibrahim may well be based in Pakistan.
Read more:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...ted-list/print
