Dawood Ibrahim
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Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar (born December 26, 1955) is the head of the Indian criminal syndicate D-Company in Mumbai. He is currently on the wanted list for organized crime and counterfeiting. He is currently number 3 on The World's 10 Most Wanted List.
Dawood Ibrahim is accused of heading a vast and sprawling illegal empire in and against India and Indians. After the 1993 Bombay bombings, which Ibrahim allegedly organized and financed, he became India's most wanted man. According to the United States, Ibrahim maintained close links with al-Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden. As a consequence, the United States declared Dawood Ibrahim a "global terrorist" in 2003 and pursued the matter before the United Nations in an attempt to freeze his assets around the world and crack down on his operations. The Bush administration has since imposed several sanctions on Ibrahim and his associates. Indian and Russian intelligence agencies have pointed out Ibrahim's possible involvement in several other terror attacks, including the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, as per Interpol.
Biography edit
Dawood Ibrahim was born on 26 December 1955 in a Konkani Muslim family in Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra, India. His father, Ibrahim Kaskar, worked as a head constable with the Mumbai Police and his mother, Amina, was a housewife. He lived in the Temkar Mohalla area of Dongri, attended Ahmed Sailor High School from which he dropped out. He grew up in the Dongri locality of Mumbai, which was when he came in contact with the gang of mobster Haji Mastan, after the latter attacked two of Ibrahim's men. Ibrahim, with his brother Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar formed the D-Company.
Ibrahim is believed to control much of the hawala system, which is the very commonly used unofficial system for transferring money and remittances outside the view of official agents. Many of the organisation's operations are in India.
The United States Department of the Treasury designated Ibrahim as a terrorist as part of its international sanctions program, effectively forbidding US financial entities from working with him and seizing assets believed to be under his control. The Department of Treasury keeps a fact sheet on Ibrahim which contains reports of his syndicate having smuggling routes from South Asia, the Middle-East and Africa shared with and used by terrorist organization al-Qaeda. The fact sheet also said that Ibrahim's syndicate is involved in large-scale shipment of narcotics in the United Kingdom and Western Europe. He is also believed to have had contacts with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden. In the late 1990s, Ibrahim traveled to Afghanistan under the Taliban's protection. The syndicate has consistently aimed to destabilise the Indian government through riots, terrorism and civil disobedience.
The US stated that it will request the United Nations to list Ibrahim "in pursuance of relevant Security Council resolutions". Such a UN listing will require that all UN member states freeze Ibrahim's assets and impose a travel ban. Juan Zarate, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, said that they are committed to identifying and attacking financial ties between terrorism and the underworld. Ibrahim is also suspected to have connections with terrorist organisations, and in 2002 was linked to the financing of increasing attacks in Gujarat by Lashkar-e-Toiba. In 2006, the government of India handed over to Pakistan, a list of 38 most wanted criminals including Ibrahim.
On 21 November 2006, it was reported that ten members of Ibrahim's gang were arrested by the Crime Branch of Mumbai Police. They were extradited from the United Arab Emirates, from where they had been deported.
India Today reported that Ibrahim provided the logistics for the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
News media outlets reported the murder of Shiraz Asghar Ali as a sign of a dramatic shift of power between the crime lords.
The Nepal government has directed freezing of assets of 224 individuals and 64 groups with Ibrahim if they are present in Nepal under Nepal's Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Act.
In 2013, former Indian cricketer Dilip Vengsarkar alleged that in 1986, Dawood had entered the Indian team dressing room in Sharjah and offered each Indian player a car if they beat Pakistan in the Sharjah Cup final.
According to International claims, Ibrahim is believed to be living in Pakistan and then in the United Arab Emirates. According to Indian claims he has shifted to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Indian sources add that "Inter-Services Intelligence appeared extremely wary of the new Indo-US cooperation to fight terrorism. The Inter-Services Intelligence and Dawood appear under a lot of pressure" On 5 May 2015 MP Haribhai Chaudhary informed the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India's Parliament) that the whereabouts of Ibrahim were unknown. However, on 11 May, Rajnath Singh, the then Home Minister of India, told the parliament that Ibrahim was in Pakistan and he will bring him back to India.
According to claims of Indian news media Times Now on 22 August 2015, Dawood was in Karachi, Pakistan. According to said media corporation, they had conversation with a woman in Karachi on August 22, 2015. Transcripts of conversations which were published on the news agency's website, in one conversation she said that she is Dawood's wife and "he is sleeping", while in the second conversation she said that there was no one by that name known to her.
According to a dossier prepared by India in August 2015, to be handed over to Pakistan, Ibrahim has nine residences in Pakistan and has three Pakistani passports which he frequently uses to travel.