TOP 7 MOST WANTED FUGITIVES
1. GANGSTER NOEL CUNNINGHAM
He escaped from a prison transport van in June 2003; he was being taken from Brixton Prison to face charges over a £1.25 million security-van heist in which the driver of the van was shot in the knee after he was ordered to open the door while his colleague was pistol-whipped. His partner in crime was convicted in February 2008 of using a gun to escape from the van. Detectives have vowed that Cunningham will have his day in court.
2. DRUG DEALER JOAQUIN GUZMAN LOERA
The top target of the American Drug Enforcement Administration, the fifty four-year- old, also known as “Shorty,” heads the Sinaloa Cartel of international drug traffickers. He reputedly pays up to two million dollars to lieutenants to keep him safe and is said to change mobile phones after each conversation. Loera follows the Sinaloan credo of not killing innocent people and is regarded as a Robin Hood-type character.
3. EX-SPY ANDREI LUGOVOI
The former KGB spy, age forty-two, is wanted in the UK for the murder of a soldier and spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 in London. The authorities say they have enough to charge Lugovoi but the Russians refuse to hand him over. He protests his innocence from Moscow and claims MI6 spies, the Russian Mafia, or Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky carried out the killing.
4. DICTATOR OMAR HASSAN AL -BASHIR
The UN says the ethnic cleansing carried out by Sudanese dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir left 300,000 dead and 2.5 million homeless in the Darfur region, where his regime used rape as an instrument of terror. International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requested a warrant to arrest him on ten charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, but critics said it would make matters worse for the people of Darfur.
5. ARMY CHIEF RATKO MLADIC
Mladic, sixty-six, was Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic’s army chief and a key figure in the ethnic cleansing of Croats and Muslims. He was indicted for genocide, by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (UN-ICTY) at The Hague in 1995. The Serbia government is offering one million dollars for his capture while the U.S. is offering five million. He is one of only two of 161 wanted by the UN-ICTY who remain free. The other is Goran Hadzic who faces fourteen counts of war crimes.
6. CRIME BOSS JAMES J. BULGER
Linked to eighteen murders, Bulger has evaded the FBI for nine years. Known as “Whitey,” the seventy-eight-year-old Boston crook is on the U.S. 10 Most Wanted List for drug dealing, money laundering, extortion, murder, and other organized crimes. He is known to use disguises to visit libraries and historic sites. The FBI is offering one million dollars for information leading to his arrest.
7. FRAUDSTER ASIL NADIR
In 1990, following the collapse of his Polly Peck business empire, Nadir fled from the UK to northern Cyprus. He was prosecuted on various counts of theft and fraud but failed to appear for trial in 1993, having absconded to the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which has no extradition treaty with the UK. He is wanted on theft charges of £34 million. In 2003 he vowed to return to clear his name but refused until the British government promised not to remand him in jail until his trial.
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