Hüseyin Baybaşin

Hüseyin Baybaşin (born 25 December 1956) is a Kurdish drug baron and crime boss, the former leader of the Baybaşin family. Following his drug trafficking in the 1990s, he made his name internationally. He was a notorious criminal against whom European countries had issued search warrants. In 2002, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Nieuw Vosseveld, where he remains today.

Baybaşin was born in Lice in 1956. At the age of 14, he was introduced to marijuana and was first caught with pounds of hashish in Istanbul in 1976, when he was 20. In the following years, he became a heroin dealer when his family entered the heroin business. With the Kısmetim-1 incident in 1992, he made a name for himself in Turkish and European media. In 1994, he moved to the United Kingdom, where his brother Abdullah Baybaşin was also based.

In 1997, Baybaşin was one of the most wanted men by British foreign intelligence MI6. In 1998, his personal fortune was estimated to be at least £22.2 billion in today's pound sterling. Having tracked him down, the intelligence coalition arrested him and his nephew Gıyasettin Baybaşin in a mansion in Lieshout, Netherlands on 27 March 1998 in a joint operation code-named Black Tulip.

Baybaşin was once referenced in the Valley of the Wolves, Turkey's most popular TV series about the mafia. Baybaşin is referred to by the European press as the "Europe's Pablo Escobar". Prosecutor Plummer said of Baybaşin, "We watched him for eight months, it was like watching the movie The Godfather. Every day someone new would come and the first thing they would do was kiss Hüseyin Baybaşin's hand."