Hüseyin Baybaşin

Hüseyin Baybaşin (born 1956 in Lice, Diyarbakır) is a Kurdish drug lord. Once described as "Europe's Pablo Escobar", he is currently serving life sentence in the Netherlands convicted of drug smuggling charges. Hüseyin Baybaşin is a member of a clan having roots in the rural Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. In the 1970s, the clan began refining heroin in remote farmhouses in Lice, close to the Syrian border. Huseyin Baybaşin, the head of the family, teamed up with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish terrorist group fighting for autonomy in Turkey's south-east. With the PKK's firepower, the Baybaşin syndicate took control of vast quantities of the heroin coming out of Afghanistan. In 1976, he was apprehended with 11 kg...