The federal police added 3 new criminals to Belgium’s Most Wanted list. This time: a drug lord, a Serbian assassin who killed a human rights activist at the behest of the secret service 35 years ago and a man who tried to eliminate his rival in love have been attached to the list.
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A drug baron, Serbian hitman and would-be killer: 3 new names on Belgium's 'Most Wanted' list
Colin Clapson
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Veselin Vukotic (centre)
The most notable new name on the list is that of Veselin Vukotic. The 66-year-old Serb was sentenced to life imprisonment early this year for a murder that happened no less than 35 years ago. On 25 February 1990, Kosovo human rights activist Enver Hadri was murdered in Brussels by an armed commando in broad daylight.
Investigators soon suspected this was a political reckoning, emanating from the then Yugoslav secret service. A trial before the court of assizes was held in 2016, during which the man who commissioned the killing Bozidar Spasic was given a life sentence along with those who executed the murder Andrija Draskovic and Veselin Vukotic. None of them were present at the trial, but the latter two appealed their convictions. The result? A new trial. Again they were given life sentences, again both were not present. The court of cassation still needs to consider an appeal against this new verdict.
Vukotic has spent some time detained in Belgium. In 2006, he was arrested in Spain. The Spanish authorities handed him over to Belgium, where he then spent some time in prison on suspicion of Hadri's murder. But Belgium in turn handed him over to Serbia, where he also had to face trial. There, however, he was released after only a few months, and Serbia refused to send him back to Belgium again.
Steven Achten
Steven Achten has been on the run for years. In 2021, the 45-year-old man was sentenced to eight years in prison by the- Antwerp appeal court for an attempted murder in Hechtel-Eksel (Limburg) in February 2015. This was a crime of passion: the victim was his girlfriend's ex-husband and there was allegedly a conflict over custody.
Achten’s girlfriend also had to stand trial. She appeared in court and was also sentenced to 8 years' imprisonment.
Zakaria El Kasmioui
Police are also searching for Zakaria El Kasmioui, aged 29. On 30 June 2022, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and an €80,000 fine for importing at least 2.5 tonnes of cocaine through the port of Antwerp.
In the drug world, he goes by the nickname ‘Piwi’. Until his conviction in 2022, he had a clean criminal record, but for years it was clear to investigators that he was a big fish. The court sees him as the leader of a gang that smuggled at least 13 consignments of cocaine from South America to Belgium. El Kasmioui did not remove the drugs from the ships in person. It is said that he never set foot in the port. So what did he do? He selected the teams whose job it was to recover the drug cargoes from the ships. He had several team members infiltrate a firm that worked with refrigerated containers.
His criminal activities paid off: he was said to have made millions from drug smuggling. Police seized his mobile phones, computers and tablets, as well as a whole range of luxury clothing: trainers, jumpers, t-shirts and sunglasses by Givenchy, Dior, Chanel, Gucci, Fendi, Valentino and Louis Vuitton
El Kasmioui was also briefly in a Belgian prison, but was allowed to leave pending trial. It is now suspected that he has gone into hiding in Dubai.