Hüseyin Baybaşin

Hüseyin Baybaşin (born 25 December 1956) is a Kurdish drug baron and organised crime boss. Following his drug trafficking in the 1990s, he made his name internationally.

He is referred to by the European press as the "Europe's Pablo Escobar" and strong family relationships were mentioned by commentators. Prosecutor Robin Plummer, made the following statement about Hüseyin 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 Baybaşin's hand. The Baybaşin family terrorized other mafias in the UK for many years."

Baybaşin was a notorious criminal against whom European states had issued search warrants. He is still serving a life sentence in the Netherlands, where he has been convicted since 2002.

Early life
Hüseyin Baybaşin was born in Lice, Diyarbakır on December 25, 1956. His family, like every other families in the district, was a poor Kurdish family with many children. At the age of 14, he met his first drug, marijuana, and started smoking it. When his elder brothers turned drugs into an illegal business, he became a drug dealer.

In the early 1970s, his uncle Mehmet Şerif Baybaşin started producing drugs by refining heroin in an isolated village in Lice.

Crime bossing
In 1976, he was caught while transporting 24 lb hashish to Istanbul. In 1984, he was arrested in the United Kingdom for smuggling drugs internationally on the basis of a fake passport. He was sent from the United Kingdom to Turkey to serve his sentence but was released in 1989.

The rise


Hüseyin Baybaşin became particularly famous after the MV Kısmetim-1 shipwreck, which shook the public order in Turkey. The Kısmetim-1 cargo ship, which was besieged by the Turkish Police, allegedly carrying ~6,800 lb of base morphine to be smuggled to Turkey, was sunk by its crew in 1992. The alleged drugs were never recovered.

In 1994, he fled to the United Kingdom to join his brother Abdullah Baybaşin and applied for asylum. In 1995, he was arrested in the Rotterdam for dealing in firearms without a licence.

By 1998, the Baybaşin brothers had amassed a fortune smuggling heroin to Europe. Hüseyin and Abdullah moved to North London and chose Amsterdam as their base.

Falling


In 1997, Hüseyin Baybaşin was on the blacklist of British foreign intelligence MI6. Baybaşin's strict confidentiality was difficult to unravel and was discussed with the Dutch (AIVD), Belgian (GISS), and German (BND) intelligence services. After intensive intelligence work, the intelligence coalition tracked down Baybaşin and captured Hüseyin Baybaşin and his nephew Gıyasettin Baybaşin in a villa in Lieshout on 27 March 1998 in a joint operation code-named "Black Tulip". He was initially placed in a regular detention centre in Rotterdam. On 26 June 1998, it was decided to place him in a high-security detention centre in Vught. His detention in Vught Prison was extended several times.

Hüseyin Baybaşin and Gıyasettin Baybaşin were tried and found guilty of murder, hostage, racketeering, kidnapping, forgery, and drug trafficking on 10 February 2001. Ton Derksen, a Dutch professor emeritus, got access to the telephone recordings which were presented as evidence. According to him, the telephone recordings were manipulated. Hüseyin Baybaşin was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment, which was commuted to life imprisonment in July 2002. Gıyasettin Baybaşin was sentenced to 11-year imprisonment. Abdullah Baybaşin was convicted around the same time and imprisoned in the United Kingdom.

On 24 December 2003, Hüseyin Baybaşin was transferred to another prison with a different regime. On 23 March 2004, a psychiatric report found that Baybaşin had developed various mental problems including chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and a strong tendency towards somatisation during his detention in the maximum security prison.

In the same period, the State Security Court in Istanbul convicted Hüseyin Baybaşin and Gıyasettin Baybaşin, who were imprisoned in the Netherlands, and Hüseyin Baybaşin's cousin Nizamettin Baybaşin, who was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment in Germany, on charges of forming a crimainal organisation, establishing a terrorist organisation, and exporting illegal drugs.

Personal life
Baybaşin has four children. He is a Kurdish nationalist and active supporter and financier of the PKK. He renounced his Turkish citizenship in 2005. And while in prison, he became a naturalised Dutch citizen.

Wealth
In 1998, Baybaşin's fortune was known to be £18 million (£ in inflation adjusted 2024 pounds). According to the reports of the Dutch police, Baybaşin owns movable and immovable property (1998):
 * 5 cars, 3 pieces of valuable land, 2 furniture companies, and a house in the Netherlands.
 * A manor worth €6,000,000 in Belgium.
 * A hotel and house in England.
 * A vehicle worth 50,000 marks, land worth 400,000 marks, and a company in Germany.
 * Small plots of lands in Turkey worth $1,500,000 and a car worth $70,000.

It is estimated that Baybaşin invested a large part of his fortune in touristic resorts, luxury hotels, and nightclubs on the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts.

In popular culture
In the European public opinion of the early 2000s he was constantly referred to as "Europe's Pablo Escobar" or "European Escobar".

Robin Plummer, the British prosecutor, made the following statement about Hüseyin Baybaşin:

Baybaşin was once referenced in the Valley of the Wolves, Turkey's most popular TV series about the mafia. In the 47th episode of the series, a scenario in which the goods of a drug baron named "Husrev Aga"—from Diyarbakır—sink into the sea with Kısmetim-1 (renamed as Nasibim-1 in the series) was included.