Life after bin Laden: five of the world’s most wanted men

Bye bye bin Laden. But even though there'll be no more grainy videos from America's least favourite fundamentalist, there are still plenty of other bad boys on the run.

By Nick Bradshaw

So Osama bin Laden has been cornered and dispatched. The man who topped the poll of the FBI’s Most Wanted for almost a decade, has been topped by a US stealth squad’s precision strike on his fortified mansion in Pakistan.

As news spread of the demise of the man behind the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, there was widespread celebration across America.

But bin Laden is not the only bad boy out there, with a number of other high-profile characters still managing to evade capture in a variety of countries and jurisdictions.

And so JOE.ie gives you five of the world's most wanted men:

Ratko Mladic

Probable current location: Bosnia and Herzegovina (possibly Serbia)

The military leader of the Bosnian Serb army, Ratko Mladic was seen as the bloodthirsty right-hand man of Radovan Karadzic during the Bosnian war.

Karadzic is currently banged up in the International Court in The Hague, Netherlands where he’s on trial for genocidal behaviour, among other things. But his former best buddy Mladic is still at large (former in the sense that Karadzic denounced Mladic as a ‘madman’ as things stopped going the Bosnian Serb’s way).

When the Bosnian ethnic factions reached an uneasy truce in the mid 90s, Mladic quickly ran for the mine-infested hills of his homeland and has remained there since.

He’s wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia on counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his part in the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995. He has also wanted for questioning over his involvement in the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica in July 1995.

There’s a big aul’ price on his head: Serbia are offering €10 million for information leading to his capture and the US government is offering a $5 million reward.

It’s understood that the capture of Mladic may be a condition of Serbia joining the EU, but that most Serbs are against Mladic’s extradition to The Hague. Despite being a fugitive on the run, he continued to receive an army pension up until 2005.

Joaquin Guzman

Probable current location: Mexico

Guzman is Mexico's most powerful drug trafficker, having taken over the narcotics racket once dominated by Colombians like Pablo Escobar.

Guzman, known as el Chapo, or Shorty, heads the Sinaloa Cartel and is responsible for the trafficking of cocaine from Colombia, up through Mexico and into the US, often through an elaborate network of tunnels.

He runs his dirty little business with an air of ruthlessness, having had to take part in a number of bloody battles in order to retain control of the transport corridors. The number of dead as a result of the various turf wars runs into the thousands.

After the Mexican courts ruled he could be extradited to the U.S. in 2001, Guzman escaped from prison in a laundry truck. Since then he has evaded close encounters with the Mexican military. There is currently a US bounty on his head of $5 million.

Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov

Probable current location: Russia

In Russia he’s a businessman, in America he’s a wanted man. Tokhatakhounov is an Uzbek- born former sportsman with a penchant for bribing sporting judges and for organized crime.

In fact, he’s suspected of fixing everything from beauty pageants to persuading the figure skating judges at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games to favour the French – something he was indicted for in the US.

He’s a big tennis fan and has been linked to a number of tennis stars. Yevgeni Kefelnikov has defended his “friend”, but not everyone in the Russian professional tennis fraternity has been so forward in associating themselves with, or even talking about, Tokhtakhounov.

Marat Safin has refused to discuss a man that he’s described as "not his problem" and Anna Kournikova reportedly said "I have heard of this man. But I don't think I should talk about it. I am Russian and I will have to go back there."

The US government have labelled him a "major figure in international Eurasian Organized Crime" who has been involved in "drug distribution, illegal arms sales and trafficking in stolen vehicles".

Understandably, the American authorities wouldn’t mind having a quiet word.

James Bulger

Probable current location: United States

James Bulger makes our list as a result of his Irish connection. Bulger’s name can be found on the list of the FBI’s ‘Ten most wanted’ criminals in the US. He’s been listed there since 1999 and moves up a spot thanks to the toppling of the man who had been at the top, bin Laden.

The 81-year-old son of Irish immigrants is current head of The Winter Hill Gang, an Irish-American Boston-based crime ‘family’. But not everyone in his biological family is a wrong ‘un – his younger brother is a former president of the Massachusetts State Senate and of the University of Massachusetts.

Bulger, however, has a long and varied history on the wrong side of the law that started when he was a teenager in a gang known as the Shamrocks. His crime career spans well over half a century and includes a stint in San Francisco’s notorious Alcatraz prison.

He went on the run in 1994 when he was tipped off to the fact that the authorities were about to arrest him. Subsequently, both the US Government and Interpol would like a quick chat with him about a variety of issues, such as his involvement in racketeering, murder, extortion, money laundering and distributing drugs.

The reward for information leading to his capture currently stands at $2 million. He’s know to have set up safe deposit boxes in Dublin, so if you see a shady looking Irish-American octogenarian shuffling into your local bank, it might be worth a quick call to the Feds.

Matteo Messina Denaro

Probable current location: Italy

Playboy Italian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, also known as Diabolik, has been on the run since 1993. He’s believed to have become one of the senior leaders of the long-established Cosa Nostra, the original Sicilian Mafia network, following the arrest of lynchpin Bernardo Provenzano in 2006.

He’s a bit of a star, having made the front of Italian news magazine L’Espresso where he was described as “The New Boss of the Mafia”.

He has a reputation for fast living and allegedly killed a Sicilian hotel owner who accused him of taking young girls to bed.

Back in 1993, the Italian government launched a serious crackdown on the Mafia. Denaro played an important role in a Cosa Nostra campaign of deadly bomb attacks aimed at forcing the government to stop its crackdown.

They’ve been after him ever since, and with a fair few of those around him being rounded up in recent times, it would appear that the noose is finally tightening.