Osama bin Laden is dead, and Ratko Mladić is under arrest, but terrorism and war crimes continue to dominate the list of the world’s most wanted fugitives.

 

The president of Sudan, Bashir is the only current world leader wanted on charges of genocide. In 2009 and 2010, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants for his arrest on five counts of crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, torture, rape and forced transfer), two counts of war crimes (directing attacks civilians and pillaging), and three counts of genocide. Bashir has ruled Sudan as a dictator since 1989, directing mass killings in South Sudan and in Darfur. Despite the warrants against him, he has travelled with impunity to Qatar, Chad, Kenya, and Djibouti.

The commander-in-chief of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group in Uganda, Kony was charged by the ICC in 2005 with 12 counts of crimes against humanity (including murder, rape and enslavement) and 21 counts of war crimes (including murder, attacking civilians and forced recruitment of child soldiers). Kony and the LRA have since moved on from Uganda to the neighboring countries, in particular the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) the Central African Republic and southern Sudan. According to Human Rights Watch, since 2008, the LRA has killed at least 2,400 people and kidnapped another 3,400.

The military leader of the National Congress for the Defense of the People, a miltia group operating in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ntaganda was charged in 2006 by the ICC with war crimes, including the massacre of civilians and the forced recruitment of child soldiers. Despite his indictment, he was made a general in the Congolese army.

With Ratko Mladić in custody, Hadžić is the last remaining fugitive wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which was created by the U.N. Security Council in 1993. The president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina, he is charged with the massacres and executions of hundreds of Croats and others. His charges include “Murder; torture; cruel treatment; wanton destruction of villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity; destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to education and religion; and plunder of public or private property.” Serbia, where he is thought to be hiding, has offered a $14 million reward for his capture.

With Osama bin Laden gone, al-Zawahiri is the only alleged terrorist for whom the Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program is offering a $25 million reward. An eye surgeon who helped found the Egyptian Islamic Jihad militant group, he has been Al-Qaeda’s’s chief ideologue and may have played a major role in pulling off the September 11 attacks. He has been indicted for his alleged role in the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The leader of Afghanistan while it was ruled by the Taliban from 1996 to 2001, Omar was considered a reclusive character even before he went into hiding. Periodically he has been reported dead, but his death has never been confirmed and he is thought to be in the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan or Pakistan.

A native of Saudi Arabia, al-Mughassil was indicted in the United States in June 2001 on charges that he plotted and carried out the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19 members of the U.S. Air Force.

A U.S. citizen living in Yemen, al-Awlaki is alleged to have encouraged Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas on November 5, 2009, and Umar Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Northwest flight to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. In early 2010, President Barack Obama authorized the assassination of al-Awlaki.

Austrian-born Brunner is considered the highest-ranking Nazi war criminal still at large. The top aide to Adolf Eichmann, he is charged with organizing the deportation to death camps of about 130,000 Jews from Austria, Greece, France and Slovakia. He was sentenced to death in absentia in France as early as 1953. Last thought to be residing in Syria, it is not known if he is still alive. If he is, he would be 99 years old.

Another Austrian, Heim was a doctor at three concentration camps, known as Dr. Death, who tortured and killed prisoners. Captured by U.S. soldiers in March 1945, he was later released and continued to work as a gynecologist in Germany. As war crimes investigators closed in on him, he escaped in 1962. He is alleged to have converted to Islam and died in Egypt in 1992. However the site of his grave is not known, and it is still unclear whether he really died.

-David Wallechinsky