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Uganda's military dictator 1971-1979

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Few survivors of Idi Amin's hideous regime in Uganda in the 1970s can recount its horrors so vividly as can Bob Astles, Amin's British-born aide who for several years sat close to the seat of terror. Newly arrived in Britain with the aim of clearing his name, Mr Astles talked at length to PAUL VALLELY of the Times

Bob Astles is a man of strange contradictions.

'I never had the influence with Amin which people made out,' Mr Astles said. 'I saw him fairly infrequently.'

Moments later he was boasting of their intimacy. 'I was the only person he could trust because I never asked him for anything - no fine house, no privileges, no Mercedes-Benz. I was the only one, perhaps because I was white, who he could be sure was not after his job and his life. If Idi Amin ever had a sincere friend, it was Bob Astles.

'I was the only person who could cope with him. The other members of his Government would phone me and say: 'Can you come quickly - he is out of control.'

'I would go and let him shout and rail at me and then I would try to calm him down. I was one of the few people he trusted,' Mr Astles returned to Britain this week stateless, forced to renounce his adopted Ugandan citizenship as a condition of his release from the country's top security Luzira jail.

He believes he had plenty of evidence to clear himself of all the allegations made against him. The most notorious of these are complicity in the murder of Uganda's Archbishop Luwoom, British-born businessman Robert Scanlon, four European journalists, and the Kenya businessman Bruce McKenzie, whose light aircraft was blown out of the air by a bomb after Amin had presented him with a parting gift of a stuffed animal head.

He is also often accused of having an influential role in the State Research Bureau, the most ruthless of Amin's death squads killed about 7,000 people, but human rights organizations put it as high as 200,000.

'I have answers to all this,' Mr Astles says. 'I have been proved guilty of nothing. I will produce the evidence.'

The two men met in the Congo in 1964 when Mr Astles was asked to ferry arms for the secret service of the then President Milton Obote.

'Amin was an impressive man,' Mr Astles recall; 'a dedicated soldier, teetotaller and an excellent leader of men. He was a considerate officer, concerned for the welfare of soldiers and civilians.'

Having joined Britain's colonial civil service in 1952, Mr Astles was posted to Uganda where he was a supervisor of works for 11 years. When Uganda became independent in 1962 he used his British government gratuities to buy an old aircraft and founded Uganda Aviation, forerunner of the national airline. In 1963 he joined Uganda Television and was promoted to manager, a job he held until 1971 when Amin seized power from the Obote Government.

Amin asked him to continue at Uganda Television but, as a supporter of Obote, Astle refused and was shortly jailed in Makindye prison. Twelve weeks later he was taken, shackled, to his old televison station for a public interrogation by the State Bureau.

'They made one mistake,' Mr Astles said. 'They told me how long the programme was to last and let me glimpse the questions which Amin personally had drawn up. I was able to spin out the argument on the first two so that they ran out of time before they could get to the tricky ones.'

Amused, Amin released the Englishman to his farm on the shores of Lake Victoria, where Astles stayed for four years until 1975 when Amin asked him to put Uganda Aviation back on its feet.

He claims that for the next four years he went continually in and out of favour with the quixotic dictator, occupying a variety of posts - leader of the anti-corruption squad, special advisor for British affairs, and finally manager of the Cape Town Villas Hotel.

Life with Idi Amin Dada, according to Mr Astles was full of mad gestures. It was particularly chilling that, though they sprang from insanity, there was a cold calculation about them.

'Amin was always, even in his early days, capable of controlling and exploiting this part of his personality,' said Mr Astles. 'It was a consistent tactic. When the phone rang, you never knew whether it was going to be: 'How are you my old friend' or, 'You are a subversive, you are a spy plotting against Uganda.' He pretended to be furious, but he had not lost his temper, it was part of a deliberate plan, as was his buffoonery.

Amin once took Mr Astles and two girl friends for a jaunt in an amphibious car that was designed to be eased gently into the water from a beach. Amin, laughing, drove if off a 4ft-high rock ledge into Lake Victoria. It sank. Laughter turned to fury. 'He said it was my fault because I hadn't closed my door properly.'

Amin's unpredictability was reflected, too, in his foreign policy, where Mr Astles ofted acted as an unofficial intermediary with foreign powers.

'In 1978 Amin decided to go to war with Tanzania. It was utterly wrong and having got into a position he couldn't get out of, he forced the Arabs to assist in the war. One of the countries most reluctant to help was Libya, but Amin told Colonel Gadaffi that if he didn't send assistance then Uganda would turn to Israel for help. Gadaffi reluctantly sent troops.

'There was always good and bad, some and insane in Idi Amin. He was both a ruthless killer. But the buffoonery which was at first a clever tactic, eventually slipped into a kind of wild irrationality which became highly dangerous.

'The liquor was the first problem. He began drinking in the Congo. Brandy was his drink - he developed a real taste for it. Soon he was drinking brandy with his breakfast. As the years went by he became a maniac when he was drunk. The alcohol began to eat into his brain; it caused him great pain and he would swallow Aspros by the handful. He went for treatment over the years to Cairo, Moscow and eventually Israel.'

'The other corrupting influence was the power. In African politics everybody wants to be top man. When you get there you know that; everybody is out to kill you, so in defence of power you become more and more ruthless. That is what happened to Amin.'

He was, Mr Astles says, suspicious to the point of paranoia of everyone around him. 'On several occasions he accused me of trying to kill him. In the end it became ridiculous.'

'Sometimes I was like a friend to Amin; other times he just wanted me around like a dog - I was a sort of court jester. Our relationship became increasingly strained.' Mr Astles belives there were at least four attempts by Amin to kill him.

The first was in 1976: 'I was head of the anti-corruption office and 30 major cases were investigated with the aim of recovering money. But powerful emines were made and they fed Amin's suspicion of me.'

Mr Astles was arrested and sent to the Nagura Public Safety Unit. The anti-corruption office was sealed and 12 volumes of investigation documents disappeared.

His release three weeks later coincided with the attempt on Amin's life. As the State Research Bureau men came to arrest him, he escaped to Kenya in a small boat. The secret police, fearing to report failure claimed he had drowned and Amin announced his death.

He feld to England but in the meantime the Israelis staged their raid on Entebbe airport to rescue their hijacked nationals. Mr Astles returned to Uganda to find Amin accusing him of passing on useful information to the Israelis.

Mr Astles believes a second attempt on his life was reconnoitred by Amin himself. The Ugandan leader arrived one day made a close inspection of Mr Astles' bedroom and bathroom, muttering about the state of the paintwork. Mr Astles was subsequently trapped by armed men in the bathroom where Amin had ascertained the window did not open. Mr Astles had, however, taken the precaution of sawing through the hinges to make an escape route.

Lying low until Amin's mood had changed, Mr Astles reappeared with a story about being kidnapped by coffee-smugglers and ritually marked with their tribal scars.

The third attempt, he says, came in 1978 when he was ambushed on the road from Entebbe in a large and well-planned attack. So sure was Amin of its success that he phone Mrs Astles to commiserate and tell her the body could be collected from the city mortuary. In fact Mr Astles had escaped into a military post whose commander turned away his pursuers.

In a fourth attempt, also an ambushed, Mr Astles told of escaping by car after one of his bodyguards had been killed.

When Amin finally fell in 1979, Astle was well-prepared and as the Tanzanian Army entered the country, fled once more to Kenya by motoboat. There he was promptly arrested by the Kenyan Special Branch and the new Ugandan government shortly began extradition proceedings.

BOB ASTLES spent six years in Uganda's Luzira maximum security prison after his extradition. 'Six years is a long time on a hard floor, with no bed and only two blankets', he observed.

Like the other inmates, he relied on a system of smuggling to survive. 'We got letters in, food, newspapers, radios. We could get things out that way, too.'

The inmates of Mr Astle's block elected him their section leader. 'My job was to keep the peace between the detainees and the staff, and to try to prevent escapes. I had five in my section; in one I had to slam the main door to prevent a mass escape.'

(As a result he was not well-liked among the prisoners, according to one fellow-inmate who is now a Uganda government soldier. 'He was what the English call a nark. He informed upon other prisoners. He had his own network of informers. He was feared but it brought him many privileges. He virtually ran the place.')

Mr Astles says he used his time there to collect information on the crimes of the Amin regime. 'I could not have been put in a better place to do it!'

He says he has smuggled out depositions from many of the prisoners to lawyers in London to be published in the event of his death.

The worst moment in his six years came, he says, just after the coup in July this year which brought and end to Dr Milton Obote's second period as president of Uganda.

The new military leaders had announced and amnesty. 'I had been cleared for release along with the other 2,600 and I packed ready to go. We assembled. Then at the last moment I was told: 'You are a foreigner. You are not to be released now.' I was devastated,' Mr Astles said.

His wife Mary Ssenkatuuka, a Ugandan national who is still in the country, obtained a writ of habeas corpus, but the Government ignored the summons from the Ugandan High Court because, according to Mr Astles, one of the new Military Council's factions, consisting largely of Amin's former men, feared the courtroom would give Mr Astles a forum in which to reveal their former activities.

However three days after the court's deadline expired a senior member of the Military Council offered Mr Astles his freedom if he revoked his Ugandan citizenship and agreed to leave the country without speaking to anyone - an opportunity he seized.

Mr Astles realizes that the most insistent question he must now answer is why he chose to remain in Amin's regime when he saw its hideous nature.

His reply is that he was caught up in events, and it would have been dangerous to refuse the presidential diktat. 'You just do not do that sort of thing in Africa. To run would have been cowardice, and that is something Africans never forgive.

'It wasn't me I was protecting but my wife and two children and the people who worked for me. They would have been imprisoned, tortured or murdered if I had stayed away for long'.

'Besides, I genuinely felt that by being there I could moderate his excesses'.

When Amin was once determined to humilate the foreign diplomatic corps in Kampala, he summoned them all to a presidential rally which he insisted on holding in the remote north of the country, according to Mr Astles. He then contacted all the airlines and told them to make sure there were no seats on planes available to diplomats that day. They had to drive for six hours and the Chinese delegation even had to walk the last 10 miles because their Mercedes-Benz broke down.

'Just before he was due to make his address, the Big Man summoned me and asked what I thought of his speech,' says Mr Astles.

'It was four sentences, written in Ki-Swahilli. They said: 'Africans like chickens. Every African wants to own his own chicken. Africans will not allow Russians to come to their country and steal their chickens. Let the Russians remember that.' That was all. He delivered it and went, laughing. The diplomats, especially the Russian delegation, were furious.'

'There was a lot of whining about the time when Amin made 14 white men kneel at his feed and swear allegiance - but what they were really annoyed about was the fact that he outwitted them.' says Mr Astles in explaining the affair.

'In Uganda at that time - around 1975 - there were a lot of white men without work because of problems between them and Immigration. The system was that they were allowed work permits for only two tours of duty; most of them had been in Uganda for years and were on their third. The only way they could work was to become Ugandan citizens.

'Fourteen of them approached me. I said I would ask Amin. When I did he said: Yes, but I must have my piece of cake out of it'. I was not clear what he meant.'

Tongue-in-check, Amin told Mr Astles that the only way he could get so many naturalizations past his Defence Council (which actually lived in fear of him) was if the white men agreed to join the Ugandan Army Reserve; such loyalty would have to be rewarded with citizenship, he said.

'All 14 agreed. Not one dropped out. After the next meeting of the Defence Council, Amin ordered the 14 to appeal on the veranda surrounded by all the brigadiers and colonels of the council.

'He proclaimed their citizenship. Great brass ink-trays were brought out and the white men were finger-printed. 'Now come the oath,' said Amin. 'Kneel and swear.'

'The whites were furious, but he had tricked them good and proper. They had got what they wanted. Now they had no option to give him what he wanted. That is what realy galled them.'

Bob Astles tells how Kay, the most powerful of the five wives of Idi Amin, died under the knife fo a doctor who was performing an illegal abortion. The man was so terrified that he chopped her body into pieces to dispose of it more easily.

He had double reason to be afraid- The doctor was the illicit lover of the President's wife and, as Kay had been out of favour with Amin for some time, it was clear the despot would soon discover who had made the woman pregnant.

The doctor put the dismembered pieces into a sack, went to the door of his surgery and found it surrounded by Amin's State Research Bureau police, who had been tailing the woman. In a panic, the doctor administered poison to his wife, his five children and himself. He was dead by the time the secret policemen entered.

Amin was furious, not at the murder, but at being cheated of revenge of the affrontery of a presidential cuckolding. He ordered her body to sewn back together and laid on a bed like a grotesque mummy.

Amin summoned his remaining wives and their children, who numbered around 50, and made them view the ghastly cadaver.

'See,' he said with relish, 'the judgement of Allah on a Christian woman.'

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Bob Astles - The years of terror with President Amin

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Few survivors of Idi Amin's hideous regime in Uganda in the 1970s can recount its horrors so vividly as can Bob Astles, Amin's British-born aide who for several years sat close to the seat of terror.

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"Baby Face" Nelson was born Lester M. Gillis on December 6, 1908, in Chicago, Illinois. He roamed the Chicago streets with a gang of juvenile hoodlums during his early teens. By the age of 14, he was an accomplished car thief and had been dubbed "Baby Face" by members of his gang due to his juvenile appearance. Nelson's early criminal career included stealing tires, running stills, bootlegging, and armed robbery.

In 1922, Nelson was convicted of auto theft and was committed to a boys' home. Two years later, he was released on parole, but within five months he was returned on a similar charge.

In 1928, Nelson met a salesgirl, Helen Wawzynak, whom he married. His wife retained the name Helen Gillis throughout their marriage.

Nelson was sentenced to a prison term of one year to life for his January, 1931, bank robbery in Chicago, Illinois. After a year's confinement, Nelson was removed from the Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet, Illinois, to stand trial on another bank robbery charge in Wheaton, Illinois. On February 17, 1932, Nelson escaped prison guards while being returned to Joliet. After a brief stay in Reno, Nevada, he fled to Sausalito, California. There he meet John Paul Chase, with whom he would be closely associated for the rest of his life.

John Paul Chase (pictured), born December 26, 1901, lived most of his life in California. He attended school through fifth grade, then worked at a ranch near San Rafael, California. Chase later worked in railway shops for four years, first as an office boy, then as a machinist's apprentice. In 1930, Chase became associated with a liquor smuggling operation comprised of persons with underworld connections.

When Nelson arrived in California, Chase still was involved with the liquor smuggling gang. Nelson worked with Chase as an armed guard for the truck used to illegally transport liquor. The two men became close friends, and Chase frequently introduced Nelson as his half-brother.

Nelson was joined by his wife and remained in California until May, 1933. While Chase stayed in Sausalito, Nelson departed to Long Beach, Indiana, where he lived for several months. While in Indiana, Nelson met several criminals, including Homer Van Meter, and occasionally accompanied them to San Antonio, Texas. Nelson may have made his original connection with the Dillinger gang during this period.

In December, 1933, Nelson contacted Chase and they remained together for almost a year. During this time, a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis. The perpetrators were reportedly in an automobile bearing California license plates which were eventually traced to a car owned by Nelson.

After a short trip to Bremerton, Washington, Nelson and Chase proceeded to Reno, Nevada. Chase later reported in an interview that Nelson killed a man during an altercation while they were in Reno. The victim was a material witness in a United States Mail Fraud case.

In April, 1934, Nelson, Helen Gillis and John Paul Chase went to Chicago, Illinois, where they joined the Dillinger gang. While Chase remained in Chicago, Nelson and his wife vacationed with the Dillinger gang at the Little Bohemia Lodge in northern Wisconsin.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) learned of the gang's location on April 22, 1934, and special agents proceeded to the Little Bohemia Lodge. Barking dogs alerted the gangsters to the impending FBI raid. The gangsters escaped in the dark, leaving a few women associates, including Helen Gillis, behind.

Nelson fled to a nearby home and forced his way in with two hostages. Shortly thereafter, Special Agents J. C. Newman and W. Carter Baum arrived at the scene with a local constable. When their car stopped, the diminutive Nelson, who stood only five feet four inches high and weighed 133 pounds, rushed to the car and ordered the occupants to get out. Before they could comply, Nelson shot all three men, instantly killing Special Agent Baum with a series of shots from his automatic pistol.

Within a short time, Chase rejoined Nelson. Helen Gillis, who had been released on parole, met her husband and Chase about a month later. They lived near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for several days. On June 23, 1934, Attorney General Homer S. Cummings offered a reward for Nelson's capture or information leading to his arrest.

A robbery of the Merchants National Bank, South Bend, Indiana, occurred on June 30, 1934, in which a police officer was shot and killed. "Baby Face" Nelson, John Dillinger, and Homer Van Meter participated in the actual robbery. Following the robbery, the gangsters fled to Chicago, Illinois. Later two police officers were shot on Wolf Road, outside Chicago, when Nelson opened fire as they approached the gang's meeting place.

Notorious gangster leader John Herbert Dillinger was shot and killed on July 22, 1934. Following Dillinger's death, Nelson, Helen Gillis and Chase left Chicago for California with two associates. That summer, Nelson and Chase made numerous trips between Chicago and California. On one occasion, they were arrested for speeding in a small town. They paid the $5 fine at the police station and were released. Their car, containing machine guns, rifles and ammunition, was not searched.

In late August, the group returned to Chicago. Within a month, Nelson went to Nevada and Chase traveled to New York City. Nelson and Chase again joined forces near Minden, Nevada, on October 10, 1934. They proceeded to Chicago, where they stole a car on November 26, 1934, and drove to Wisconsin.

Inspector Samuel P. Cowley of the FBI's Chicago Office had been assigned to search for Nelson. On November 27, 1934, Cowley received word that Nelson had been seen driving a stolen car. Two Special Agents spotted the vehicle near Barrington, Illinois. Nelson brought his car around behind the Agents, and Chase fired five rounds from an automatic rifle into the Agents' car. One of the Agents returned fire and one shot pierced the radiator of Nelson's car, partially disabling it.

Inspector Cowley and Special Agent Herman Edward Hollis approached in another automobile and began pursuing Nelson and Chase. Suddenly, Nelson veered off Northwest Highway at the entrance to the North Side Park in Barrington, Illinois, and stopped. Before Cowley and Hollis could get out of their car, Nelson and Chase began firing automatic weapons at them.

Special Agent Hollis was killed during the gun battle which lasted only four or five minutes. Inspector Cowley, mortally wounded, died early the next morning.

Nelson, also critically injured, was helped into Cowley's automobile by Chase. Many guns and other articles were transferred from Nelson's car to the agents' car. Helen Gillis had been lying in a field during the battle. She jumped into the government vehicle as Chase was driving it away.

"Baby Face" Nelson died about 8:00 that evening. In response to an anonymous telephone call, FBI Agents found his body the next day near a Niles Center, Illinois, cemetery.

Nelson's widow was arrested on November 29, 1934. Having violated the terms of her parole, Helen Gillis was sentenced to serve one year and one day in the Women's Federal Reformatory in Mila, Michigan.

After Chase disposed of Nelson's body, he returned to Chicago. On November 30, 1934, Chase responded to a want ad for men to drive automobiles to Seattle, Washington. To obtain this job, he was photographed for a chauffeur's license at a police station. Because Chase's only known arrest had been for drunkenness in 1931, no wanted circulars with his photograph and fingerprints had ever been issued.

In early December, 1934, Special Agents of the FBI's San Francisco Office contacted Chase's former employers and associates. They were instructed to notify the FBI if Chase was seen. On December 27, 1934, Chase tried to borrow money from employees at the Mount Shasta, California, fish hatcheries, where he had worked in 1928. The FBI and local police were immediately notified, and Chief of Police A. L. Roberts apprehended Chase.

On December 31, 1934, Chase was removed to Chicago, Illinois, where he was the first person to be tried under the law that made it a Federal violation to murder a Special Agent of the FBI in the performance of his duties. Chase's trial began on March 18, 1935. One week later, the jury found him guilty of murdering Inspector Samuel P. Cowley. The Attorney General designated the United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, California, to receive Chase, and his imprisonment there began on March 31, 1935.

Chase was transferred to the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kansas, in September, 1954. Although he had been serving time for the murder of Inspector Cowley, 20 years later Chase had not yet been tried on the December 31, 1934, indictment charging him with Special Agent Hollis's murder. On April 27, 1955, a motion was filed in United States District Court, Chicago, Illinois, demanding immediate trial on this indictment or its dismissal.

On October 17, 1955, a United States District judge dismissed the indictment that charged Chase with Hollis's murder. He held that Chase's mere knowledge of the indictment and his failure to take action did not constitute a waiver of his right to a speedy trial.

When the pending indictment was dismissed, Chase became eligible for parole. After parole had been denied repeatedly, Chase finally was paroled from Leavenworth on October 31, 1966. After his release, Chase resided in California, where he was employed as a custodian for over six years.

John Paul Chase died of cancer in Palo Alto, California, on October 5, 1973.

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"Baby Face" Nelson was born Lester M. Gillis on December 6, 1908, in Chicago, Illinois. He roamed the Chicago streets with a gang of juvenile hoodlums during his early teens. By the age of 14, he was an accomplished car thief and had been dubbed "Baby Face" by members of his gang due to his juvenile appearance.

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Soviet dictator during World War II and Early Cold War

Hello Scholars!  The BBC article (click on the photo to open in a new page) is quite good.  Here are also a couple other links!
http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/leaders/joseph-stalin/

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/joseph-stalin-bloody-tyrant-and-bookworm-1.2798051

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Joseph Stalin: National hero or cold-blooded murderer?

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A timeline of Stalin’s life, the man that oversaw the war machine that helped defeat Nazism and who was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century.

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Founder of a black market drug app was found guilty of murder-for-hire plot.

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Ross Ulbricht, the convicted mastermind behind the Silk Road, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in a New York courtroom on Friday. During the 2.5 hour-long session, the court heard Ulbricht's voice for the very first time as he pleaded for leniency, alongside the voices of parents whose children allegedly died of Silk Road-related drug overdoses.

A year and a half after he was arrested in a San Francisco library-and four years after he first created the online drug marketplace Silk Road-Ulbricht is now looking at spending the rest of his life in prison. A jury found Ulbricht guilty of seven charges at the end of his trial in early February 2015. His sentencing brings an end for now to the courtroom battle over a man seen by some as a drug lord and by others as a hero. The defense says, however, that they will appeal.

In court, Ulbricht expressed remorse and asked for a lenient sentence, echoing a letter he had submitted days earlieir. "I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path," he told Judge Katherine Forrest, according to Arstechnica. "If given the chance, I would never breach the law again."

Judge Forrest, however, was not convinced. "There's no way Silk Road could be reasonably expected to reduce violence," she said, according to Motherboard. "You are a no better person than any other drug dealer. Your education doesn't make you different, and makes this morning inexplicable."

"Silk Road's creation showed that you thought you were better than the law," she added.

In addition to life in prison, Ulbricht also owes the government almost $200 million, as outlined in a memo filed by the prosecution on Thursday. The $183,961,921 accounts for all illegal drug and fake ID sales in Bitcoin on the Silk Road. "Ulbricht is liable for a money judgment in the amount of all the criminal proceeds laundered through Silk Road, regardless of the extent he personally retained those funds," the memo said.

After the trial, Ulbricht's mother said she felt the ruling was based on emotion. "They have their war on drugs, and they are going to have their example. And Ross is that example," she said.

As one of the first court cases dealing with questions of privacy and anonymity online, the fallout of the Silk Road takedown will set precedent. " Ulbricht went from hiding his cybercrime identity to becoming the face of cybercrime and as today's sentence proves, no one is above the law," said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in a statement after the sentencing.

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Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Sentenced To Life In Prison

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Ross Ulbricht, the convicted mastermind behind the Silk Road, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in a New York courtroom on Friday. During the 2.5 hour-long session, the court heard Ulbricht's voice for the very first time as he pleaded for leniency, alongside the voices of parents whose children allegedly [...]

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North Korea's current supreme leader who is feared or mocked by the rest of the world.

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The video begins with no fanfare, no preamble. A lone figure, a young man in black, sits in front of a stark white backdrop. His hair is tousled. He fidgets. Light streams in from his right, but there is nothing to identify where he is or whom he's with.

He trains his eyes on the camera. "I'm from North Korea," he says in English. To prove it, he holds up a passport. Emblazoned on the front is a coat of arms featuring Mount Paektu, the sacred and still-active volcano in the far north of the Korean Peninsula, where the Kims trace an ancestry they claim gives the family its right to rule.

He looks off to his left, pausing to collect his thoughts. "My father has been killed a few days ago." Though the video was released on March 7 of this year, a month before I traveled to Pyongyang, the reference to the death indicates it was filmed weeks earlier. His voice is jumpy but composed. He does not mention which country he's in now, but he says he's safe.

There is one clue: an insignia at the top of the screen, in both English and Korean, that reads "Cheollima Civil Defense." A cheollima is a mythical winged horse capable of flying vast distances. It's a popular name in North Korea for everything from streets to fonts; a statue of one looms over downtown Pyongyang. It gives the name of the group, which seems to have helped this North Korean flee, a symbolic meaning that's at once serious and ironic.

He concludes by saying he hopes his situation will get better. The forty-one-second video then cuts to black.

The young man's name is Kim Han Sol. His father, Kim Jong Nam, was assassinated in an airport in Kuala Lumpur in February. The person widely believed responsible for issuing the order is Kim Jong Nam's half brother, the chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea, and the supreme leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea: Kim Jong Un.

At thirty-three, Kim Jong Un may be the world's youngest sitting dictator. But with his nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, he's already among the most dangerous. On July Fourth, he gave what he gloated was an Independence Day "gift" to the "American bastards": the successful test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile designed to obliterate American cities. Once his nuclear scientists get a warhead small enough to fit on the Hwasong-14 missile, he'll have a weapon capable of wreaking unimaginable destruction.

There is no question how important bombs and missiles are to the North Koreans. But the goal is not to carry out a first strike; with eighty thousand U. S. troops across Northeast Asia backed by a fleet of nuclear-powered weaponry, the North Koreans know such a move would be suicide. Kim Jong Un wants to prove his strength to the people he leads, to cause enough concern to force the international community to acknowledge the DPRK as a nuclear state, and to get the U. S. to the negotiating table-for aid and concessions, if not a peace treaty to finally, officially, end the Korean War.

While Kim stares down his enemies abroad, it's easy to forget that he's also fighting a battle from within his own borders: to survive at all costs. Like any autocratic leader, he's under constant pressure to maintain order and allegiance. But his youth and inexperience make staying in power that much more of a challenge, which in turn requires absolute control. Opposition must be eliminated. No one is safe, not even his own family.

Three weeks before his video appeared on YouTube, Kim Han Sol was in Macau with his teenage sister, Sol Hui, who'd just graduated from a nearby Anglican high school, and his mother, Ri Hye Kyong.

Macau was more home to them than Pyongyang. They'd moved to the former Portuguese colony, forty miles west of Hong Kong and now under Chinese control, in the early 2000s to seek refuge from North Korea. In Macau, the family lived under the protection of local police and could move around with relative ease. There they were safe.

On February 13, Kim Jong Nam was not with them. He was visiting Kuala Lumpur, a four-hour plane ride away, using a DPRK passport under the name Kim Chol-the North Korean equivalent of John Smith. There are few places in the world where a North Korean citizen can travel without diplomatic hassle. Malaysia is one.

That morning, Kim Jong Nam headed to Kuala Lumpur International Airport to catch a flight back to his family. Terminal 2 was bustling with travelers that day, from European backpackers in sandals to Malaysian women in ornately printed hijabs. It was the start of the Lunar New Year, and banners featuring baby chicks festooned the airport walls in celebration of the Year of the Rooster.

What happened next was captured on closed-circuit television later broadcast by a Japanese TV network. Kim Jong Nam, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and a summer blazer, strides into the terminal. He is alone and has no luggage, save for a black backpack slung over his shoulder. He stops briefly to check a flight display, then moves toward a line of check-in kiosks. A woman in white approaches him from behind. There is a brief tussle as she reaches around and wipes a cloth across his face. Another woman squeezes in and swipes his cheeks. Seconds later, both slip away, heading in opposite directions and disappearing into the crowd.

Kim lurches toward the information desk, where he interrupts an employee and gestures frantically at his eyes. Police accompany him to the airport's health clinic, though they don't appear to be in a hurry; Kim walks on his own. But a photograph taken minutes later shows him slumped in a chair in the clinic, arms outstretched, eyes glazed. He suffered a seizure, police would later say.

Kim died minutes later, in a hospital-bound ambulance. He was forty-five. Toxicology reports revealed that he was poisoned with the banned nerve agent VX, short for "venomous agent X." The dose was composed of two tasteless and odorless chemicals that are benign on their own but deadly once mixed-a possible explanation for the two face swipes. A single drop can kill within minutes; the substance can linger for up to half an hour, potentially exposing scores in a crowded space like an airport terminal. Developed during the cold war for military warfare, it is classified by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction. According to South Korea's Ministry of National Defense, VX is just one part of DPRK's chemical-weapons arsenal, the total size of which they estimate to be twenty-five hundred to five thousand metric tons.

February in North Korea is brutal. Fierce Siberian winds sweep across the country without respite or obstruction: Much of the habitable land in the country, which is about the size of Virginia, was denuded of trees decades ago.

Around the time of Kim Jong Nam's assassination, soldiers, teachers, factory workers, and traffic controllers were donning their warmest winter jackets to lay red flowers reminiscent of the late leader's namesake kimjongilia begonia at the foot of his statue on Mansu Hill. University students danced in public plazas to "Song of CNC"-an ode to computerization-jackets flapping as they twirled. Children ripped open gift packets to suck on the sweet candy inside. It was a time of celebration.

There are few places in the world where a North Korean citizen can travel without diplomatic hassle. Malaysia is one.

In the days after Kim Jong Nam's death, there was no word of it on North Korean state media. Without acknowledging the incident, Kim Jong Un presided over lavish festivities for a holiday honoring the February 16 birth of their father, Kim Jong Il, known as the Day of the Shining Star-an anniversary that is marked with the same mix of solemnity and festivity as Jesus' birth in the Bible Belt.

The Kims are everything, and everywhere, in North Korea. Bronze statues of Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung, the first leader of the DPRK, loom over the city. Massive mosaics chart the mythology of their heroic feats. Their portraits cover the walls of every office, home, and school, and the loyalty badge pinned to the shirt over the heart of every adult in this nation of 24 million people.

Officially, North Korea calls itself a socialist state. In reality, it operates like an absolute monarchy. Kim Il Sung, the self-proclaimed guerrilla fighter and the DPRK's spiritual figurehead since its formation in 1948, was placed in power by the USSR at the outset of the cold war. He was the Soviets' man in Pyongyang, meant to install and maintain a communist regime. But Kim knew that ruling with a hammer and a sickle wouldn't be enough to command the devotion of a people who'd just survived nearly four decades of Japanese occupation, a period defined by systematic attempts to stamp out their language and culture. He and his political strategists drew heavily on Korean history and culture, in addition to mysticism, shamanism, and Christianity, to craft their singular version of Marxism-Leninism. They created a social order built around a cult of personality that was both familiar and new. Its guiding principle was called juche, a nationalistic ideology of self-reliance that inspired a sense of pride-and it was used to justify xenophobic, isolationist, totalitarian policies.

Like the founder of ancient Korea thousands of years before him, Kim also claimed ancestry in a lineage forged on Mount Paektu, the volcano that has held spiritual significance for Koreans for centuries. To be "descended" from the mountain meant that he-and his offspring-were godlike.

But mythology alone wasn't enough to keep order. For decades, the Kims have purged, exiled, and executed their enemies, often with scant or no proof of wrongdoing. People disappear all the time from North Korea, even at the highest levels of leadership. Assassinations are carried out in secret, and rarely acknowledged publicly. For North Koreans and foreigners alike, the best way to figure out who's in power and who's been purged is to keep an eye on state-media coverage of formal events. The names of officials are listed in order of seniority and importance; omissions often indicate that a person has been removed from power, or even executed.

Yoji Gomi, a Japanese journalist who covers North Korea, corresponded with Kim Jong Nam in the mid-2000s. Gomi told me Kim's assassination was "a message that North Korea will not tolerate any anti-North Korean views. It's a threat, a strong warning."

By the early 1970s, Kim Il Sung, then in his sixties, had been the DPRK's leader for more than two decades. Succession was on his mind, but it wasn't yet clear who among his relatives would inherit power.

Kim Jong Il, the president's elder son, proved his mettle by outmaneuvering Kims from what he called kyotkaji-"side branches"-in need of pruning. "In order to show his father that he was the most loyal, he mercilessly attacked and got rid of the associates he selected for reasons like having the wrong ideals," Hwang Jang Yop, a high-ranking party secretary who'd helped Kim Il Sung conceive juche, wrote in a memoir after he defected to South Korea in 1997.

First, Kim Jong Il engineered the relocation of his uncle, then a rising star in the ruling Workers' Party, to remote Jagang Province. Meanwhile, Kim's half brother, son of the president's second wife, was dispatched to a succession of North Korean embassies in Eastern Europe, where today he serves as ambassador to the Czech Republic, tethered to the regime but far from its center of power.

In 1974, Kim Jong Il, then the secretary of the party's Central Committee, was recognized internally as heir apparent. But it was a full twenty years before he took over, after Kim Il Sung died of a heart attack in 1994. The Dear Leader ascended to the head of state in what became the communist world's first hereditary transfer of power.

Kim Jong Nam was born into this world of court intrigue, in Pyongyang in 1971, to Kim Jong Il and his then-lover. Kim's birth, like his death, was never announced in state media. But he was doted on by his father: Diplomats were ordered to bring back expensive toys for his son, including diamond watches and gold-plated guns. Father and son were driven around in matching Cadillacs. According to a close Kim relative, the bill for the young Kim's lavish birthday parties ran more than $1 million, in a country where the yearly GDP at the time was less than $500 per person.

When Kim Jong Nam was three, his mother suffered a nervous breakdown that required medical care in Moscow. Kim joined her when he was eight, but he was so unaccustomed to life outside the royal palace that he urinated in his pants rather than use Russia's public toilets, recalled Song Hye Rang, his maternal aunt, in her 2000 memoir, Wisteria House. He was sent back to Pyongyang to live with his aunt and her children, Ri Il Nam and Ri Nam Ok. A 1981 family portrait (see page 97) shows a pudgy Kim Jong Nam in shorts and sneakers, his feet barely touching the floor, his father next to him, his aunt and two cousins standing over his shoulder. The cousins would later recall Jet-Skiing off Wonsan beach, watching foreign movies, and reading South Korean books with Kim-unimaginable, and illicit, luxuries for the average North Korean.

Kim Jong Il began grooming his eldest child for a future in politics, as his father had done with him, bringing him to his office. He dressed the boy in the military uniform of the marshal of the Korean People's Army. "This is where you'll be giving orders," Kim Jong Il said, according to his cousin.

But Kim Jong Nam soon had competition for the affections of the man he called Papa. Over the next two decades, Kim Jong Il had at least four more children: a daughter with his wife, and two boys and a girl with another mistress. Kim Jong Un was the younger of those two sons, born while Kim Jong Nam was off at boarding school in Geneva. As he'd done with his eldest son a decade earlier, the Dear Leader bedecked his youngest son in full military uniform. Kim Jong Il's sushi chef, a Japanese man who published a memoir in 2003 under the pen name Kenji Fujimoto, wrote that when he first met Kim Jong Un, then seven, the boy was outfitted like "a little general." A certain ruthlessness seemed to shine through even then: "He glared at me with a menacing look when we shook hands. I will never forget the look in his eyes, which seemed to be saying: 'This is one despicable Japanese guy.' "

This survival-of-the-fittest culture put the futures of Kim Jong Nam's close relatives in jeopardy. Some stayed in Pyongyang; others fled. In 1982, Ri Il Nam, one of the cousins who was raised with Kim Jong Nam, decided he wanted to live the "American dream," according to a tell-all memoir he published under an assumed name titled Taedong River Royal Family. He called the South Korean embassy in Switzerland, where he was then enrolled in school, asking for advice on how to seek asylum in the United States. The ambassador instead convinced him to defect to Seoul.

In his memoir, Ri recounted a circuitous, if relatively comfortable, route that took him from Switzerland to France, Belgium, Germany, and the Philippines, where he caught a flight to Seoul. Contrast that with the trials most North Korean defectors endure: Many don't have passports or travel permits and must bribe their way to the Chinese border. Because China has a policy of sending defectors back to North Korea, they must make their way on foot or by bus to a safe house or a refugee camp in a third country-Laos, or Vietnam, or Thailand-before they are able to reach South Korean embassies to seek asylum. The process can take years.

Ri lived quietly in Seoul under an assumed name and, thanks to plastic surgery, a new look. In 1995, broke and desperate for money, he agreed to call his aunt, Kim Jong Nam's mother, in Moscow in exchange for $5,000 from a Seoul-based magazine that wanted to air the conversation live.

It was Ri's own mother, Song Hye Rang, who picked up the phone. The call was the first time they had

spoken in fourteen years. The two spoke regularly for two months before Song decided to defect, too.

For decades, the Kims have purged, exiled, and executed their enemies, often with scant or no proof of wrongdoing.

"I had to choose," Song wrote in Wisteria House. "I could tell the leader everything and go back to Pyongyang, or take this chance to leave to the West." If she confessed, Kim Jong Il probably "would not punish me, but he would not allow me to leave Pyongyang," she wrote. "Even if there were plenty of books and I could take twelve baths a day and eat all kinds of delicacies, the residence was a prison to me."

At the time, most North Koreans would have considered one warm bath a month a luxury. It was a grim time to be an ordinary citizen in the DPRK. The country, already suffering from the loss of the safety net once provided by the Soviet Union, was in the throes of an unprecedented famine. For decades, most North Koreans had relied on the state to provide meals through a centralized rationing system. But by the late 1990s, the state had nothing left to feed its people. Half a million North Koreans starved to death, according to conservative estimates, in what became known as the "Arduous March." Meanwhile, in the royal palace, luxuries overflowed. Kim Jong Il, it was revealed, was the world's largest customer of Hennessy cognac in 1992 and 1993, reportedly racking up a yearly tab as high as $800,000.

In 1996, Ri published his memoir. He described growing up in the lavish household he called a "fancy prison." There, he said, the supreme leader presided over parties with strippers that devolved into orgies. When one wife threatened to report the bacchanalian festivities to Kim Il Sung, Ri wrote, her husband shot her to death in Kim Jong Il's presence.

Six months after the book's release, in February 1997, almost exactly twenty years to the day before Kim Jong Nam's death, Ri stepped out of his building's elevator and was shot in the head.

Ri's death spooked his sister, Ri Nam Ok, who'd fled North Korea in 1992. Before she left, she'd written a note for her uncle Kim Jong Il, whom she considered a father figure, begging him not to find her. Now with her brother dead, she sued to halt publication of her own memoir, The Golden Cage; the book was never released. "I was terrified of being found and taken back to North Korea, of being taken home in a bag," she wrote of her defection, according to a copy of the manuscript obtained by Esquire. "I would have preferred to be killed on the spot rather than suffer a life in the mines or the countryside." In a 1999 interview with South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, she further emphasized the fear that comes with belonging to the Kim dynasty: "Being exposed means death to our family." She has not spoken publicly since.

Defections occurred in Kim Jong Un's branch of the family as well. In 1998, his beloved aunt, Ko Yong Suk, who'd been dispatched to Europe to watch over him while he attended Liebefeld-Steinhölzli, a school outside Bern, Switzerland, fled with her husband to the United States, where today they live middle-class lives under new names with U. S. passports. Kim Jong Un was a teenager when she left, and some North Koreans suggest he was embittered by her abandonment. His heart hardened toward those who defected from the DPRK.

Born to different mothers a dozen years apart, Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Un grew up in separate palaces in Pyongyang. Kim Jong Nam claimed the two never met. Like his older brother, Kim Jong Un enrolled at the Swiss school under a false identity. A school official acknowledged the enrollment of a North Korean teen he described as "well-integrated, industrious, ambitious," and passionate about basketball. Every day, an embassy driver picked him up from school, and fellow students say they thought he was the driver's son. It was only when the young man made his international debut as the DPRK's heir apparent, in 2010, that they realized his quasi-royal provenance.

At the time, many assumed Kim Jong Nam, the eldest son, was being groomed to succeed his father. But he preferred partying to politicking. Gregarious and social, he began sneaking out to drink as soon as he hit puberty, his maternal aunt recalled in her memoir.

Kim simply was not suited for life in Pyongyang. "Kim Jong Nam was treated like a prince in North Korea," says Lee Sin Uck, a professor of political science at Dong-A University in South Korea. The two became friends when Kim visited Moscow, where Lee was in graduate school, in the late 1990s. "But he was bored and wanted to see the outside world."

The final straw came in 2001. Kim Jong Nam, by then a father of three-a son with his wife, and a son and daughter with his mistress-tried to visit Tokyo Disneyland using a fake Dominican passport under the name Pang Xiong: "Fat Bear" in Chinese. Kim, by then a portly figure in gold-rimmed glasses, was detained and sent back by Japanese immigration officials. The incident made international headlines. Kim and his father agreed he should move to Beijing, a two-hour flight from Pyongyang but far enough not to cause the regime further embarrassment. There, Kim's marriage soured, and he later moved with his mistress and their children, Han Sol and Sol Hui, to Macau.

With its crumbling, fading colonial buildings, its casinos and showgirls, Macau is a slice of old Europe in new Asia. On weekends, thousands of tourists take the hour-long ferry from Hong Kong to pack the narrow alleyways, see the cathedral, line up for the famous egg tarts, and drink vinho verde under the shade of palm trees in genteel courtyards of what is the most densely populated region in the world.

And to gamble. Sleepy by day but decadent by night, Macau-known as the Monte Carlo of the Orient, and the only place in China where casinos are allowed-is where Asia's nouveau riche go to indulge their vices. "Living Las Vegas in Asia," Kim wrote in a 2010 Facebook post, since taken down. Reporters assigned to trail him knew to lie in wait at the Wynn Macau or the Four Seasons, though he claimed in recent years to have given up gambling.

For a man raised in luxury, Kim Jong Nam led a simple life. He traveled by taxi rather than the chauffeured Mercedes-Benzes that today ferry the Kim family around Pyongyang. He dined at local Korean restaurants, sporadically treating friends to meals. He dressed in breezy weekend attire. But Kim was hard to miss, and not because of his gold necklaces, rings, and elaborate tattoos: He moved about with an official entourage of local police who, as he told Yoji Gomi, were providing either protection or surveillance. He was never sure which, but said he tolerated and appreciated their presence.

As a father, he gave Han Sol the ordinary childhood he never had. Instead of shuttling his son off to a Swiss boarding school under a false identity, leashed to North Korean diplomats charged with keeping an eye on him, Kim Jong Nam sent him to a local private school. There, Han Sol built a diverse group of friends, tested out new looks (ear piercings, dyed hair), and even explored Christianity. He started a Twitter account, posted photos to Facebook, and created a blog on which he listed Bruce Almighty and Katy Perry among his favorite cultural touchstones.

When Kim Jong Un's aunt left him, his heart hardened toward those who defected from the DPRK.

The equilibrium Kim Jong Nam had achieved for himself and his family began to shift when, in August 2008, his father had a stroke. As the leader recuperated out of the public eye, Jang Song Thaek, a Moscow- educated cadre who was married to the Dear Leader's beloved only sister, stepped in as de facto regent. With the future of the regime in question, Jang oversaw a campaign to groom his nephew Kim Jong Un to assume power.

Even if Kim Jong Nam hadn't expressed interest in politics in years, his half brother saw him as competition. In 2009, Kim Jong Un sent secret police to raid his vacation home and arrest his friends. After that, Kim Jong Nam told Gomi he avoided going back to North Korea. Lee, the professor at Dong-A University, says, "In a patriarchal society, when the first heir has been banished and the second or third son becomes the heir, the first son's existence becomes a threat. Considering the Paektu lineage, Kim Jong Nam was a threat."

When Kim Jong Un, then twenty-seven, assumed power in December 2011, following the death of Kim Jong Il from a heart attack (the same ailment that killed Kim Il Sung), he inherited an altogether more intense series of tensions than either of his predecessors did. The nation was economically troubled, with a per capita GDP estimated at 5 percent of that across the border in South Korea. Most North Koreans did not have reliable electricity or running water, much less computers or Internet access. Politically, Pyongyang had few friends abroad and was under growing scrutiny for its abysmal human-rights record. The country was, and still is, technically at war with the United States.

To inspire loyalty, Kim Jong Un modeled himself after his legendary grandfather, in looks and in manner. He wore the same Mao suits and straw hats Kim Il Sung wore at his age and introduced updated versions of the same economic policies. He revised the wording of a key national doctrine governing the daily life of North Koreans, known as "Ten Principles for the Establishment of the One-Ideology System," to require allegiance to those in the Mount Paektu lineage. He embarked on a campaign of terror, one that was even more far-reaching than those carried out by his father and grandfather, with an unprecedented spree of purges and executions, typically by firing squad, of those who opposed him or presented a threat. More than 140 party and military officials have been executed during Kim's rule, seared to death with flamethrowers or eviscerated by machine-gun fire, while their colleagues are forced to witness the gruesome, bloody killings, claims the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul, a government-funded research center affiliated with South Korea's National Intelligence Service. According to the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, commercial satellite images taken of North Korea in 2014 caught what appeared to be an execution by firing squad using antiaircraft machine guns.

Kim Jong Nam wrote to Gomi in January 2012, just days after his half brother took over, "Anyone with common sense would find it difficult to tolerate three generations of hereditary succession. I question how a young heir with two years of training is able to inherit absolute power that has lasted for thirty-seven years." Then, a miscalculation, or perhaps a willful denial: "Kim Jong Un is simply a symbolic figure."

Kim's criticism of the newly anointed leader did not sit well with Pyongyang. But he had a protector in Jang, the uncle who'd helped Kim Jong Un rise to power and was considered the second-most-powerful person in North Korea. Jang had high-ranking positions in the government, and he commanded a network of relatives and allies working at North Korea's missions and embassies abroad. He and his wife were Kim Jong Nam's main connections to Pyongyang.

That ended in December 2013, when Jang dramatically fell out of favor. Perhaps because he'd decided that his uncle had become too powerful, Kim Jong Un ordered Jang tried for treason and a host of other charges. Jang's execution by firing squad was made public, once again highlighting that no one, not even a close relative, was safe from the leader's wrath.

David Straub, a former U. S. diplomat and the LS-Sejong Fellow at the Sejong Institute, a think tank in South Korea, says he was "stunned" by the rashly vengeful way Jang's fall from grace was handled by North Korea. "This happened in such an atmosphere of paranoia and fear and overflowing adrenaline and testosterone," Straub says. "It shows that Kim Jong Un and the people around him put on a face of being completely confident but are under great psychological pressure. And that makes them take extreme action."

Kim Jong Nam soon found out that he, too, was on the regime's hit list. After an alleged assassination attempt, Kim pleaded with his half brother for a reprieve, the then-director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service told lawmakers two days after Kim's assassination. "Please withdraw the order to punish me and my family," he wrote in a letter reportedly intercepted by South Korean intelligence. "We have nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. Our only escape is suicide."

In late April, two months after Kim Jong Nam's death, I landed in Pyongyang. Abroad, headlines warned of impending war on the Korean Peninsula.

But in North Korea's capital, it was life as usual. The streets were calm. Farmers were preparing for the upcoming rice season. To the north, the eye-popping new neighborhood of Ryomyong Street, empty and imposing, flashed Technicolor like an amusement park on steroids. Just weeks earlier, the Marshal, as Kim Jong Un is known, himself presided over the inauguration of the new residential complex, constructed to reward his nuclear scientists.

I wanted to find out what people knew of the assassination. From years of reporting here, I knew to be cautious: North Koreans can be opinionated and snarky, but their openness does not extend to their leader and their country's political system. A strictly enforced law defines any criticism of the supreme leader as anti-state activity, punishable by hard labor or, for treason, execution by firing squad. The first time I traveled here, in 2008, our guide warned me not to destroy any North Korean newspapers. The Kims are featured or mentioned on every page, and so to crumple one up could be seen as defacing the leader's image. "Just lay the newspaper carefully on top of the wastebasket," she advised.

That warning came back to me when I heard the news that Otto Warmbier, a twenty-two-year-old University of Virginia student who was visiting North Korea in late 2015, had been arrested. Footage captured by hotel surveillance cameras shows him purportedly tearing down a poster written in Korean. He may not have known that it was a sign bearing Kim Jong Il's name, and therefore sacred. For his act of defacement, Warmbier was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor before being released and returned to the U. S., in a coma, in June of this year. He died a few days later; his doctors said he had suffered massive brain damage while in the hands of the North Koreans.

Cautiously, I asked my guides, well-educated members of North Korea's elite, if they had heard about the death in Malaysia. They nodded, saying they had read about the death of "a citizen" by heart attack. Did they know who he was? I asked. Silence.

Kim's assassination may have gone unnoticed elsewhere in the world, too, if it hadn't been for an error on the part of the Malaysian police, who, according to Reuters, informed South Korea's embassy first-not North Korea's-about the death. The news was leaked to South Korean media, and it quickly spread around the world. What ensued was a bizarre diplomatic incident. Objecting to an autopsy, North Korean officials told the Malaysian government that the man was not, in fact, Kim Jong Nam. They demanded that the body be handed over. Police refused, and all but accused the North Koreans of trying to break into the morgue where it was held.

Kim Jong Un has demonstrated untrammeled ambition and ruthlessness that seem motivated by self-preservation at all costs.

Malaysian police arrested the two women spotted on security footage: one from Vietnam and the other from Indonesia, who independently claimed they'd been promised a hundred dollars to take part in a television-show prank. Shortly after, a North Korean chemist living in Kuala Lumpur was arrested but released due to lack of evidence. Four more suspects had already fled Malaysia and were safely back in Pyongyang by the time Interpol released a "red notice," the closest equivalent to an international warrant, calling for their capture.

It was discovered that three others who were wanted for questioning, including a diplomat and an employee of North Korea's flagship airline, were holed up at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur. When Malaysian police demanded that they be turned over, North Korea responded by barring Malaysians in Pyongyang from leaving the country. In retaliation, North Korean citizens were blocked from departing Malaysia.

At the end of March, a deal was reached: The three men wanted for questioning were cleared to depart Kuala Lumpur, leaving only the two women to face trial on murder charges. If convicted, they face the death penalty.

On the same day, it was announced that Kim Jong Nam's body would be returned to North Korea in exchange for the departure of nine Malaysians in Pyongyang. The half brother to the supreme leader would, after living abroad for more than a decade, finally return home.

In the six years he's been in power, Kim Jong Un has demonstrated untrammeled ambition and ruthlessness that seem motivated by self-preservation at all costs. Despite crippling sanctions that ensure his people's ongoing misery, he continues developing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles unabated. North Korea already has the technology to annihilate Seoul and Tokyo, and experts predict it will soon be able to mount nukes on missiles that can reach Los Angeles in thirty minutes. So long as its nuclear stockpile exists, preemptive military action against the country is all but impossible, and Kim Jong Un's rule will likely continue.

But that doesn't mean he'll ever feel that his power is wholly secure. In May, North Korea issued a long letter that accused the CIA of plotting to assassinate its leader, claiming as proof that American operatives were paying tens of thousands of dollars in cash to carry out the deed. (The North Koreans have not released any evidence.) In June, South Korean intelligence told lawmakers that Kim Jong Un was becoming increasingly paranoid, and had taken to traveling at night, in decoy cars.

Since then, new details have emerged about Kim Jong Nam's fateful trip. A Japanese newspaper published security footage placing Kim in a Malaysian hotel with an American who's suspected of being a U. S. spy. In the images, Kim is wearing the same pale gray blazer and carrying the same black backpack that he was seen with on the day of his death. The bag was stuffed with $120,000 in cash, all in $100 bills, the paper reported, citing unnamed Malaysian sources.

As Kim Jong Un's paranoia deepens, which family members are in his crosshairs? His aunt has not been seen in public since her husband Jang's 2013 execution. The supreme leader's sister has been promoted to a high-ranking propaganda post in the party, but she does not appear poised to overthrow her brother. Others in the Kim royal family are lying low: There is little mention in state media of their publicity-shy brother, or an older half sister. It is unclear where a nephew, Kim Jong Nam's second son, may be.

And then there's Kim Han Sol, now twenty-two, whose video was released just weeks after his father's death. Though his mother was Kim Jong Nam's mistress, and he never met his grandfather or uncle, he's a direct descendant of Kim Il Sung, and therefore an inheritor of the Mount Paektu bloodline.

With his hipster haircut, geek-chic glasses, and charisma, Han Sol is unlike any Kim family member we've seen: intelligent, curious, and open-minded. Educated almost exclusively abroad-including at Sciences Po in France, alma mater of five of the last seven French presidents-he speaks fluent English. In the few interviews he's given, Han Sol has championed democracy, peace, and diplomacy. In one, with a Finnish television station in 2012, he praised the Arab Spring, calling the uprising that unseated Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi a "revolution." In perhaps the most surprising moment of the conversation, he referred to his uncle as a "dictator." Kim said his dream was to one day "go back and make things better, and make it easier for the people there. I also dream of unification."

Kim Han Sol has the birthright to lead and a wish for his country to open up in ways that appeal to the U. S. and its allies. "This is a cosmopolitan, bright young kid," says Straub, from the Sejong Institute. "Maybe he is the real threat, in the long term, to the regime."

The site for Cheollima Civil Defense, the group that Kim Han Sol credits with saving him, his mother, and his sister, published a declaration explaining that the three were evacuated with the help of China, the United States, the Netherlands, and a fourth, unnamed country. "This will be the first and last statement on this particular matter," it reads, "and the present whereabouts of this family will not be addressed."

Little is known about the group. Could it be run by North Korean defectors? South Korean intelligence? The country's constitution grants nationality to all Koreans born on the peninsula, north or south, and the government has a system for reintegrating-and protecting-high-profile defectors. European allies? Lody Embrechts, the Dutch ambassador to South Korea, was thanked on Cheollima's site; he has remained tight-lipped about his involvement. Or is it an ad hoc group the world will never hear from again? At press time, its website was no longer live.

Where Kim Han Sol is in hiding is a guessing game among those who monitor North Korea. Of the dozens of reporters, experts, diplomats, and agents I spoke with, no one knew-or was willing to share-any information. Is he in the United States, or a U. S.-allied country, under CIA protection? Or is he in Europe, where he has exiled family and a tight circle of friends?

The one place everyone was sure he isn't is North Korea.
Lead illustration by Ryan Melgar

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Inside Kim Jong-un's Bloody Scramble to Kill Off His Family

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While the world watches North Korea launch missiles, the very paranoid supreme leader has been busy eliminating anyone in his family who might knock him off the throne. First, his half brother was assassinated with a nerve agent in a Malaysian airport.

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Notorious crime couple went on a country-wide spree until they were tracked down and executed.

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She was just shy of five feet tall, all of 100 pounds, a part-time waitress and amateur poet from a poor Dallas home who was bored with life and wanted something more. He was a fast-talking, small-time thief from a similarly destitute Dallas family who hated poverty and wanted to make a name for himself.

Together, they became the most notorious crime couple in American history-Bonnie and Clyde.

Clyde Champion Barrow and his companion, Bonnie Parker, were shot to death by officers in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana on May 23, 1934, after one of the most colorful and spectacular manhunts the nation had seen up to that time.

Barrow was suspected of numerous killings and was wanted for murder, robbery, and state charges of kidnapping.

The FBI, then called the Bureau of Investigation, became interested in Barrow and his paramour late in December 1932 through a singular bit of evidence. A Ford automobile, which had been stolen in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, was found abandoned near Jackson, Michigan in September of that year.

At Pawhuska, it was learned another Ford car had been abandoned there which had been stolen in Illinois. A search of this car revealed it had been occupied by a man and a woman, indicated by abandoned articles therein. In this car was found a prescription bottle, which led special agents to a drug store in Nacogdoches, Texas, where investigation disclosed the woman for whom the prescription had been filled was Clyde Barrow's aunt.

Further investigation revealed that the woman who obtained the prescription had been visited recently by Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and Clyde's brother, L. C. Barrow. It also was learned that these three were driving a Ford car, identified as the one stolen in Illinois. It was further shown that L. C. Barrow had secured the empty prescription bottle from a son of the woman who had originally obtained it.

On May 20, 1933, the United States Commissioner at Dallas, Texas, issued a warrant against Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, charging them with the interstate transportation, from Dallas to Oklahoma, of the automobile stolen in Illinois. The FBI then started its hunt for this elusive pair.

Early Years

﻿ Bonnie and Clyde met in Texas in January 1930. At the time, Bonnie was 19 and married to an imprisoned murderer; Clyde was 21 and unmarried. Soon after, he was arrested for a burglary and sent to jail. He escaped, using a gun Bonnie had smuggled to him, was recaptured and was sent back to prison. Clyde was paroled in February 1932, rejoined Bonnie, and resumed a life of crime.

In addition to the automobile theft charge, Bonnie and Clyde were suspects in other crimes. At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries. Barrow, for example, was suspected of murdering two police officers at Joplin, Missouri and kidnapping a man and a woman in rural Louisiana. He released them near Waldo, Texas.

Numerous sightings followed, linking this pair with bank robberies and automobile thefts. Clyde allegedly murdered a man at Hillsboro, Texas; committed robberies at Lufkin and Dallas, Texas; murdered one sheriff and wounded another at Stringtown, Oklahoma; kidnaped a deputy at Carlsbad, New Mexico; stole an automobile at Victoria, Texas; attempted to murder a deputy at Wharton, Texas; committed murder and robbery at Abilene and Sherman, Texas; committed murder at Dallas, Texas; abducted a sheriff and the chief of police at Wellington, Texas; and committed murder at Joplin and Columbia, Missouri.

The Crime Spree Begins

Later in 1932, Bonnie and Clyde began traveling with Raymond Hamilton, a young gunman. Hamilton left them several months later and was replaced by William Daniel Jones in November.

Ivan M. "Buck" Barrow, brother of Clyde, was released from the Texas State Prison on March 23, 1933, having been granted a full pardon by the governor. He quickly joined Clyde, bringing his wife, Blanche, so the group now numbered five persons. This gang embarked upon a series of bold robberies that made headlines across the country. They escaped capture in various encounters with the law. However, their activities made law enforcement efforts to apprehend them even more intense. During a shootout with police in Iowa on July 29, 1933, Buck Barrow was fatally wounded and Blanche was captured. Jones, who was frequently mistaken for "Pretty Boy" Floyd, was captured in November 1933 in Houston, Texas, by the sheriff's office. Bonnie and Clyde went on together.

On November 22, 1933, a trap was set by the Dallas, Texas sheriff and his deputies in an attempt to capture Bonnie and Clyde near Grand Prairie, Texas, but the couple escaped the officer's gunfire. They held up an attorney on the highway and took his car, which they abandoned in Miami, Oklahoma. On December 21, 1933, Bonnie and Clyde held up and robbed a citizen at Shreveport, Louisiana.

On January 16, 1934, five prisoners, including Raymond Hamilton (who was serving sentences totaling more than 200 years), were liberated from the Eastham State Prison Farm at Waldo, Texas, by Clyde Barrow, accompanied by Bonnie Parker. Two guards were shot by the escaping prisoners with automatic pistols, which had been previously concealed in a ditch by Barrow. As the prisoners ran, Barrow covered their retreat with bursts of machine-gun fire. Among the escapees was Henry Methvin of Louisiana.

Bonnie Parker was listed as 5'5" and 100 pounds

Clyde Barrow (left) with William D. Jones, one of the Barrow gang

The Last Months

On April 1, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde encountered two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas. Before the officers could draw their guns, they were shot. On April 6, 1934, a constable at Miami, Oklahoma fell mortally wounded by Bonnie and Clyde, who also abducted a police chief, whom they wounded.

The FBI had jurisdiction solely on the charge of transporting a stolen automobile, although the activities of the Bureau agents were vigorous and ceaseless. Every clue was followed. "Wanted notices" furnishing fingerprints, photograph, description, criminal record, and other data were distributed to all officers. The agents followed the trail through many states and into various haunts of the Barrow gang, particularly Louisiana. The association with Henry Methvin and the Methvin family of Louisiana was discovered by FBI agents, and they found that Bonnie and Clyde had been driving a car stolen in New Orleans.

On April 13, 1934, an FBI agent, through investigation in the vicinity of Ruston, Louisiana, obtained information which definitely placed Bonnie and Clyde in a remote section southwest of that community. The home of the Methvins was not far away, and the agent learned of visits there by Bonnie and Clyde. Special agents in Texas had learned that Clyde and his companion had been traveling from Texas to Louisiana, sometimes accompanied by Henry Methvin.

The FBI and local law enforcement authorities in Louisiana and Texas concentrated on apprehending Bonnie and Clyde, whom they strongly believed to be in the area. It was learned that Bonnie and Clyde, with some of the Methvins, had staged a party at Black Lake, Louisiana on the night of May 21, 1934 and were due to return to the area two days later.

A crowd gathers around Bonnie and Clyde's bullet-riden sedan

Before dawn on May 23, 1934, a posse composed of police officers from Louisiana and Texas, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, concealed themselves in bushes along the highway near Sailes, Louisiana. In the early daylight, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in an automobile and when they attempted to drive away, the officers opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde were killed instantly.

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Bonnie and Clyde | Federal Bureau of Investigation

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She was just shy of five feet tall, all of 100 pounds, a part-time waitress and amateur poet from a poor Dallas home who was bored with life and wanted something more. He was a fast-talking, small-time thief from a similarly destitute Dallas family who hated poverty and wanted to make a name for himself.

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Walter White is a mild-mannered science teacher who sees his opportunity to exert aggression in the world of meth.

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Breaking Bad always tells us exactly how much each of its characters stand to gain (and, inevitably, lose). The gang's first meth batch this season earned Walter, Jesse, and Mike $367,000 each-until the cuts earned by Saul, the underlings, and Mike's "legacy costs" eroded the number to $137,000. When cooked, the methylamine stolen from the train in this season's "Dead Freight" episode would be worth $300 million-but Mike and Jesse opt to cash out by selling their shares for $5 million each, and urge Walt to do the same. And when Walter complains about the tens of millions that Mike and Jesse stand to lose in the following episode, "Buyout," Jesse turns Walter's numbers back on him: "I know for a fact all you needed was $737,000, because you worked it out, like, mathematically."

Breaking Bad has been known to hide messages in its episode titles. When put together, the titles of the first, fourth, tenth, and 13th episodes of Breaking Bad's second season spell out "737 down over ABQ," which turned out to be the resolution of the season's central mystery. But if those episode titles served as the literal Rosetta stone for that season, the episode titles of Breaking Bad's fifth season serve a more symbolic purpose. "Live Free or Die," "Hazard Pay," and "Buyout" are oblique references to the primary motivator in Walter's life: money.

It may seem self-evident to say that an aspiring drug kingpin who says he's in the "empire business" is interested in making a lot of money. Currency certainly defines each of Walter's relationships, from the hypothetical $130 million with which he unsuccessfully attempts to bribe Jesse, to the money laundering that has turned his marriage with Skyler into an unpleasant business partnership, and even his problematic relationship with Walter Jr., which Walter attempted to fix by buying him a car. It's why Walter is befuddled when new recruit Todd waves away his earnings, saying, "We can talk money once I get this right"-if it's not about money, what is it about?

But Walter's interest in money isn't about actual value anymore; it's the validation that the money represents. In "Buyout," Walter tells Jesse about his decision to sell his stake in science firm Gray Matter, the company he helped found, for $5,000-a company that's currently worth $2.16 billion, as Walter, of course, knows. Taken at face value, this revelation is a little trite. Walter's greediness is rooted in the legitimate hundreds of millions he lost by selling his shares in the company too early, and his illegitimate meth business is a subconscious attempt to make those millions back. But in the full context of the series, it tells us something about Walter that Breaking Bad has only hinted at before: that the point at which Walter had the capacity to "break bad" happened long before the series began. In chemistry terms, cancer was merely the catalyst for Walter's transformation; all the elements that have since turned him into a monster were already in place.

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The Big Secret of 'Breaking Bad': Walter White Was Always a Bad Guy

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Breaking Bad always tells us exactly how much each of its characters stand to gain (and, inevitably, lose). The gang's first meth batch this season earned Walter, Jesse, and Mike $367,000 each-until the cuts earned by Saul, the underlings, and Mike's "legacy costs" eroded the number to $137,000.

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A murderous cocaine kingpin from Colombia.

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Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (; Spanish: [ˈpaβloeskoˈβaɾ]; 1 December 1949 - 2 December 1993) was a Colombian drug lord, narcoterrorist, and politician, who was the founder and sole leader of the Medellín Cartel. Dubbed "the king of cocaine", Escobar was the wealthiest criminal in history, having amassed an estimated net worth of US$30 billion by the time of his death-equivalent to $70 billion as of 2022-while his drug cartel monopolized the cocaine trade into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Born in Rionegro and raised in Medellín, Escobar studied briefly at Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellín, but left without graduating; he instead began engaging in criminal activity, selling illegal cigarettes and fake lottery tickets, as well as participating in motor vehicle theft. In the early 1970s, he began to work for various drug smugglers, often kidnapping and holding people for ransom.

In 1976, Escobar founded the Medellín Cartel, which distributed powder cocaine, and established the first smuggling routes from Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, through Colombia and eventually into the United States. Escobar's infiltration into the U.S. created exponential demand for cocaine and by the 1980s it was estimated Escobar led monthly shipments of 70 to 80 tons of cocaine into the country from Colombia. As a result, he quickly became one of the richest people in the world, but constantly battled rival cartels domestically and abroad, leading to massacres and the murders of police officers, judges, locals, and prominent politicians,.

In the 1982 Colombian parliamentary election, Escobar was elected as an alternate member of the Chamber of Representatives as part of the Liberal Party. Through this, he was responsible for community projects such as the construction of houses and football fields, which gained him popularity among the locals of the towns that he frequented. However, Escobar's political ambitions were thwarted by the Colombian and U.S. governments, who routinely pushed for his arrest, with Escobar widely believed to have orchestrated the Avianca Flight 203 and DAS Building bombings in retaliation.

In 1991, Escobar surrendered to authorities, and was sentenced to five years' imprisonment on a host of charges, but struck a deal of no extradition with Colombian President César Gaviria, with the ability of being housed in his own, self-built prison, La Catedral. In 1992, Escobar escaped and went into hiding when authorities attempted to move him to a more standard holding facility, leading to a nationwide manhunt. As a result, the Medellín Cartel crumbled, and in 1993, Escobar was killed in his hometown by Colombian National Police, a day after his 44th birthday.

Escobar's legacy remains controversial; while many denounce the heinous nature of his crimes, he was seen as a " Robin Hood-like" figure for many in Colombia, as he provided many amenities to the poor. His killing was mourned and his funeral attended by over 25,000 people. Additionally, his private estate, Hacienda Nápoles, has been transformed into a theme park. His life has also served as inspiration for or has been dramatized widely in film, television, and in music.

The city of Medellín, where Escobar grew up and began his criminal career

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on 1 December 1949 in Rionegro, Antioquia Department. He was the third of seven children and grew up in poverty, in the neighboring city of Medellin. His father was a small farmer and his mother was a teacher. Escobar left high school in 1966 just before his 17th birthday, before returning two years later with his cousin Gustavo Gaviria. At this time, the hard life on the streets of Medellin had polished them into gangster bullies in the eyes of teachers. The two dropped out of school after more than a year, but Escobar, who did not give up, briefly became autonomous in Latin America by forging high school diplomas. He then studied in college with the goal of becoming a criminal lawyer, a politician, and eventually the president, but had to give up because of lack of money.

Criminal career

Escobar started his criminal career with his gang by stealing tombstones, sandblasting their inscriptions, and reselling them. After dropping out of school, Escobar began to join gangs to steal cars. Escobar soon became involved in violent crime, employing criminals to kidnap people who owed him money and demand ransoms, sometimes tearing up ransom notes even when Escobar had received the ransom. His most famous kidnapping victim was businessman Diego Echavarria, who was kidnapped and eventually killed in the summer of 1971, Escobar received a $50,000 ransom from the Echavarria family; his gang became well-known for this kidnapping.

Medellín Cartel

International drug routes

Escobar had been involved in organized crime for a decade when the cocaine trade began to spread in Colombia in the mid-1970s. Escobar's meteoric rise caught the attention of the Colombian Security Service (DAS), who arrested him in May 1976 on his return from drug trafficking in Ecuador. DAS agents found 39 kg of cocaine in the spare tire of Escobar's car. Escobar managed to change the first judge in the lawsuit and bribed the second judge, so he was released along with other prisoners. The following year, the agent who arrested Escobar was assassinated. Escobar continued to bribe and intimidate Colombian law enforcement agencies, in the same fashion. His carrot-and-stick strategy of bribing public officials and political candidates in Colombia, in addition to sending hitmen to murder the ones who rejected his bribes, came to be known as "silver or lead", meaning "money or death". The Medellín Cartel and the Cali Cartel both managed to bribe Colombian politicians, and campaigned for both the Conservative and Liberal parties. Hence, Escobar and many other Colombian drug lords were pulling strings in every level of the Colombian government, because many of the political candidates whom they backed financially were eventually elected. Although the Medellín Cartel was only established in the early 1970s, it expanded after Escobar met several drug lords on a farm in April 1978, and by the end of 1978 they had transported some 19,000 kilograms of cocaine to the United States.

Rise to prominence

Powder cocaine was manufactured, packaged, and sold by Pablo Escobar and his associates, and eventually distributed to the U.S. drug market.

Soon, the demand for cocaine greatly increased in the United States, which led to Escobar organizing more smuggling shipments, routes, and distribution networks in South Florida, California, Puerto Rico, and other parts of the country. He and cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder worked together to develop a new trans-shipment point in the Bahamas, an island called Norman's Cay about 350 km (220 mi) southeast of the Florida coast. According to his brother, Escobar did not purchase Norman's Cay; it was instead a sole venture of Lehder's. Escobar and Robert Vesco purchased most of the land on the island, which included a 1-kilometre (3,300 ft) airstrip, a harbor, a hotel, houses, boats, and aircraft, and they built a refrigerated warehouse to store the cocaine. From 1978 to 1982, this was used as a central smuggling route for the Medellín Cartel. With the enormous profits generated by this route, Escobar was soon able to purchase 20 square kilometres (7.7 sq mi) of land in Antioquia for several million dollars, on which he built the Hacienda Nápoles. The luxury house he created contained a zoo, a lake, a sculpture garden, a private bullring, and other amenities for his family and the cartel.

Escobar at the height of his power

Escobar was also involved in philanthropy in Colombia and paid handsomely for the staff of his cocaine lab. Escobar spent millions developing some of Medellín's poorest neighborhoods. He built housing complexes, parks, football stadiums, hospitals, schools, and churches. Escobar also entered politics in the 1980s and participated in and supported the formation of the Liberal Party of Colombia. In 1982, he successfully entered the Colombian Congress. Although only an alternate, he was automatically granted parliamentary immunity and the right to a diplomatic passport under Colombian law. At the same time, Escobar was gradually becoming a public figure, and because of his charitable work, he was known as "Robin Hood Paisa." He alleged once in an interview that his fortune came from a bicycle rental company he founded when he was 16 years old.

The Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara (center) and presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán (left) were both assassinated by orders of Escobar.

In Congress, the new Minister of Justice, Rodrigo Lara-Bonilla, had become Escobar's opponent, accusing Escobar of criminal activity from the very first day of Congress. Escobar's arrest in 1976 was investigated by Lara-Bonilla's subordinates. A few months later, Liberal leader Luis Carlos Galán expelled Escobar from the party. Although Escobar fought back, he announced his retirement from politics in January 1984. Three months later, Lara-Bonilla was murdered.

The Colombian judiciary had been a target of Escobar throughout the mid-1980s. While bribing and murdering several judges, in the fall of 1985, the wanted Escobar requested the Colombian government to allow his conditional surrender without extradition to the United States. The proposal was initially answered in the negative, and Escobar subsequently founded and implicitly supported the Los Extraditable Organization, which aims to fight extradition policy. The Los Extraditable Organization was subsequently accused of participating in an effort to prevent the Colombian Supreme Court from studying the constitutionality of Colombia's extradition treaty with the United States. In support of the 6 November 1985, far-left guerrilla movement that attacked the Colombian Judiciary Building and killed half of the justices of the Supreme Court. In late 1986, Colombia's Supreme Court declared the previous extradition treaty illegal due to being signed by a presidential delegation, not the president. Escobar's victory over the judiciary was short-lived, with new president Virgilio Barco Vargas having quickly renewed his agreement with the United States.

Escobar still held a grudge against Luis Carlos Galán for kicking him out of politics, so Galán was assassinated on 18 August 1989 at Escobar's orders. Escobar then planted a bomb on Avianca Flight 203 in an attempt to assassinate Galán's successor, César Gaviria Trujillo, who missed the plane and survived. All 107 people were killed in the blast. Because two Americans were also killed in the bombing, the U.S. government began to intervene directly.

La Catedral prison

After the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán, the administration of César Gaviria moved against Escobar and the drug cartels. Eventually, the government negotiated with Escobar and convinced him to surrender and cease all criminal activity in exchange for a reduced sentence and preferential treatment during his captivity. Declaring an end to a series of previous violent acts meant to pressure authorities and public opinion, Escobar surrendered to Colombian authorities in 1991. Before he gave himself up, the extradition of Colombian citizens to the United States had been prohibited by the newly approved Colombian Constitution of 1991. This act was controversial, as it was suspected that Escobar and other drug lords had influenced members of the Constituent Assembly in passing the law. Escobar was confined in what became his own luxurious private prison, La Catedral, which featured a football pitch, a giant dollhouse, a bar, a Jacuzzi, and a waterfall. Accounts of Escobar's continued criminal activities while in prison began to surface in the media, which prompted the government to attempt to move him to a more conventional jail on 22 July 1992. Escobar's influence allowed him to discover the plan in advance and make a successful escape, spending the remainder of his life evading the police.

Members of Search Bloc celebrate over Escobar's body on 2 December 1993. His death ended a 16-month search effort.

The tomb of Pablo Escobar and family in the Monte Sacro Cemetery, Itagüí

Escobar faced threats from the Colombian police, the U.S. government and his rival, the Cali Cartel. On 2 December 1993, Escobar was found in a house in a middle-class residential area of Medellin by Colombian special forces using technology provided by the United States. Police tried to arrest Escobar, but the situation quickly escalated to an exchange of gun fire. Escobar was shot and killed while trying to escape from the roof. He was hit by bullets in the torso and feet, and a bullet which struck him in the head, killing him. This sparked debate about whether he killed himself or whether he was shot dead.

Aftermath of his death

Soon after Escobar's death and the subsequent fragmentation of the Medellín Cartel, the cocaine market became dominated by the rival Cali Cartel until the mid-1990s when its leaders were either killed or captured by the Colombian government. The Robin Hood image that Escobar had cultivated maintained a lasting influence in Medellín. Many there, especially many of the city's poor whom Escobar had aided while he was alive, mourned his death, and over 25,000 people attended his funeral. Some of them consider him a saint and pray to him for receiving divine help. Escobar was buried at the Monte Sacro Cemetery.

Virginia Vallejo's testimony

On 4 July 2006, Virginia Vallejo, a television anchorwoman romantically involved with Escobar from 1983 to 1987, offered Attorney General Mario Iguarán her testimony in the trial against former Senator Alberto Santofimio, who was accused of conspiracy in the 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán. Iguarán acknowledged that, although Vallejo had contacted his office on 4 July, the judge had decided to close the trial on 9 July, several weeks before the prospective closing date. The action was seen as too late.

On 18 July 2006, Vallejo was taken to the United States on a special flight of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), for "safety and security reasons" due to her cooperation in high-profile criminal cases. On 24 July, a video in which Vallejo had accused Santofimio of instigating Escobar to eliminate presidential candidate Galán was aired by RCN Television of Colombia. The video was seen by 14 million people, and was instrumental for the reopened case of Galán's assassination. On 31 August 2011 Santofimio was sentenced to 24 years in prison for his role in the crime.

Role in the Palace of Justice siege

Escobar funded the M-19 communist guerrilla for the assault of the Colombian Palace of Justice.

Among Escobar's biographers, only Vallejo has given a detailed explanation of his role in the 1985 Palace of Justice siege. The journalist stated that Escobar had financed the operation, which was committed by M-19; but she blamed the army for the killings of more than 100 people, including 11 Supreme Court magistrates, M-19 members, and employees of the cafeteria. Her statements prompted the reopening of the case in 2008; Vallejo was asked to testify, and many of the events she had described in her book and testimonial were confirmed by Colombia's Commission of Truth. These events led to further investigation into the siege that resulted with the conviction of a high-ranking former colonel and a former general, later sentenced to 30 and 35 years in prison, respectively, for the forced disappearance of the detained after the siege. Vallejo would subsequently testify in Galán's assassination. In her book, Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar ( Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar), she had accused several politicians, including Colombian presidents Alfonso López Michelsen, Ernesto Samper and Álvaro Uribe of having links to drug cartels.

Escobar's widow (María Henao, now María Isabel Santos Caballero), son (Juan Pablo, now Sebastián Marroquín Santos) and daughter (Manuela) fled Colombia in 1995 after failing to find a country that would grant them asylum. Despite Escobar's numerous and continual infidelities, Maria remained supportive of her husband. Members of the Cali Cartel even replayed their recordings of her conversations with Pablo for their wives to demonstrate how a woman should behave. This attitude proved to be the reason the cartel did not kill her and her children after Pablo's death, although the group demanded (and received) millions of dollars in reparations for Escobar's war against them. Henao even successfully negotiated for her son's life by personally guaranteeing he would not seek revenge against the cartel or participate in the drug trade.

Sebastián Marroquín (born as Juan Pablo Escobar) is an outspoken critic of the violent deeds of his father.

After escaping first to Mozambique, then to Brazil, the family settled in Argentina. Living under her assumed name, Henao became a successful real estate entrepreneur until one of her business associates discovered her true identity, and Henao absconded with her earnings. Local media were alerted, and after being exposed as Escobar's widow, Henao was imprisoned for eighteen months while her finances were investigated. Ultimately, authorities were unable to link her funds to illegal activity, and she was released. According to her son, Henao fell in love with Escobar "because of his naughty smile [and] the way he looked at [her]. [He] was affectionate and sweet. A great lover. I fell in love with his desire to help people and his compassion for their hardship. We [would] drive to places where he dreamed of building schools for the poor. From [the] beginning, he was always a gentleman." María Victoria Henao de Escobar, with her new identity as María Isabel Santos Caballero, continues to live in Buenos Aires with her son and daughter. On 5 June 2018, the Argentine federal judge Nestor Barral accused her and her son, Sebastián Marroquín Santos, of money laundering with two Colombian drug traffickers. The judge ordered the seizing of assets for about $1m each.

Argentinian filmmaker Nicolas Entel's documentary Sins of My Father (2009) chronicles Marroquín's efforts to seek forgiveness, on behalf of his father, from the sons of Rodrigo Lara, Colombia's justice minister who was assassinated in 1984, as well as from the sons of Luis Carlos Galán, the presidential candidate who was assassinated in 1989. The film was shown at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and premiered in the US on HBO in October 2010. In 2014, Marroquín published Pablo Escobar, My Father under his birth name. The book provides a firsthand insight into details of his father's life and describes the fundamentally disintegrating effect of his death upon the family. Marroquín aimed to publish the book in hopes to resolve any inaccuracies regarding his father's excursions during the 1990s.

Escobar's sister, Luz Maria Escobar, also made multiple gestures in attempts to make amends for the drug baron's crimes. These include making public statements in the press, leaving letters on the graves of his victims and on the 20th anniversary of his death organizing a public memorial for his victims. Escobar's body was exhumed on 28 October 2006 at the request of some of his relatives in order to take a DNA sample to confirm the alleged paternity of an illegitimate child and remove all doubt about the identity of the body that had been buried next to his parents for 12 years. A video of the exhumation was broadcast by RCN, angering Marroquín, who accused his uncle, Roberto Escobar, and cousin, Nicolas Escobar, of being "merchants of death" by allowing the video to air.

Hacienda Nápoles

After Escobar's death, the ranch, zoo and citadel at Hacienda Nápoles were given by the government to low-income families under a law called Extinción de Dominio (Domain Extinction). The property has been converted into a theme park surrounded by four luxury hotels overlooking the zoo.

Escobar Inc

In 2014, Roberto Escobar founded Escobar Inc with Olof K. Gustafsson and registered Successor-In-Interest rights for his brother Pablo Escobar in California, United States.

Escobar kept four hippos in a private menagerie at Hacienda Nápoles. They were deemed too difficult to seize and move after Escobar's death, and hence left on the untended estate. By 2007, the animals had multiplied to 16 and had taken to roaming the area for food in the nearby Magdalena River. In 2009, two adults and one calf escaped the herd and, after attacking humans and killing cattle, one of the adults (called "Pepe") was killed by hunters under authorization of the local authorities. As of early 2014, 40 hippos have been reported to exist in Puerto Triunfo, Antioquia Department, from the original four belonging to Escobar. Without management the population size is likely to more than double in the next decade.

The National Geographic Channel produced a documentary about them titled Cocaine Hippos. A report published in a Yale student magazine noted that local environmentalists are campaigning to protect the animals, although there is no clear plan for what will happen to them. In 2018, National Geographic published another article on the hippos which found disagreement among environmentalists on whether they were having a positive or negative impact, but that conservationists and locals - particularly those in the tourism industry - were mostly in support of their continued presence.

By October 2021, the Colombian government had started a program of chemically sterilizing the animals.

Apartment demolition

On 22 February 2019, at 11:53 AM local time, Medellín authorities demolished the six-story Edificio Mónaco apartment complex in the El Poblado neighborhood where, according to retired Colombian general Rosso José Serrano, Escobar planned some of his most brazen attacks. The building was initially built for Escobar's wife but was gutted by a Cali Cartel car bomb in 1988 and had remained unoccupied ever since, becoming an attraction to foreign tourists seeking out Escobar's physical legacy. Mayor Federico Gutierrez had been pushing to raze the building and erect in its place a park honoring the thousands of cartel victims, including four presidential candidates and some 500 police officers. Colombian President Ivan Duque said the demolition "means that history is not going to be written in terms of the perpetrators, but by recognizing the victims," hoping the demolition would showcase that the city had evolved significantly and had more to offer than the legacy left by the cartels.

Personal life

Family and relationships

In March 1976, the 26-year-old Escobar married María Victoria Henao, who was 15. The relationship was discouraged by the Henao family, who considered Escobar socially inferior; the pair eloped. They had two children: Juan Pablo (now Sebastián Marroquín) and Manuela.

In 2007, the journalist Virginia Vallejo published her memoir Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar (Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar), in which she describes her romantic relationship with Escobar and the links of her lover with several presidents, Caribbean dictators, and high-profile politicians. Her book inspired the movie Loving Pablo (2017).

A drug distributor, Griselda Blanco, is also reported to have conducted a clandestine, but passionate, relationship with Escobar; several items in her diary link him with the nicknames "Coque de Mi Rey" (My Coke King) and "Polla Blanca" (White Cock).

Properties

After becoming wealthy, Escobar created or bought numerous residences and safe houses, with the Hacienda Nápoles gaining significant notoriety. The luxury house contained a colonial house, a sculpture park, and a complete zoo with animals from various continents, including elephants, exotic birds, giraffes, and hippopotamuses. Escobar had also planned to construct a Greek-style citadel near it, and though construction of the citadel was started, it was never finished.

Escobar also owned a home in the US under his own name: a 6,500 square foot (604 m ²), pink, waterfront mansion situated at 5860 North Bay Road in Miami Beach, Florida. The four-bedroom estate, built in 1948 on Biscayne Bay, was seized by the US federal government in the 1980s. Later, the dilapidated property was owned by Christian de Berdouare, proprietor of the Chicken Kitchen fast-food chain, who had bought it in 2014. De Berdouare would later hire a documentary film crew and professional treasure hunters to search the edifice before and after demolition, for anything related to Escobar or his cartel. They would find unusual holes in floors and walls, as well as a safe that was stolen from its hole in the marble flooring before it could be properly examined.

Escobar also owned a huge Caribbean getaway on Isla Grande, the largest of the cluster of the 27 coral cluster islands comprising Islas del Rosario, located about 35 km (22 mi) from Cartagena. The compound, now half-demolished and overtaken by vegetation and wild animals, featured a mansion, apartments, courtyards, a large swimming pool, a helicopter landing pad, reinforced windows, tiled floors, and a large but unfinished building to the side of the mansion.

In popular culture

Fernando Botero's portrayal of Escobar's death

Escobar has been the subject of several books, including the following:

Escobar (2010), by Roberto Escobar, written by his brother shows how he became infamous and ultimately died.

Escobar Gaviria, Roberto (2016). My Brother - Pablo Escobar. Escobar, Inc. ISBN 978-0692706374.

Kings of Cocaine (1989), by Guy Gugliotta, retells the history and operations of the Medellín Cartel, and Escobar's role within it.

Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw (2001), by Mark Bowden, relates how Escobar was killed and his cartel dismantled by US special forces and intelligence, the Colombian military, and Los Pepes.

Pablo Escobar: My Father (2016), by Juan Pablo Escobar, translated by Andrea Rosenberg.

Pablo Escobar: Beyond Narcos (2016), by Shaun Attwood, tells the story of Pablo and the Medellin Cartel in the context of the failed War on Drugs; ISBN 978-1537296302

American Made: Who Killed Barry Seal? Pablo Escobar or George HW Bush (2016), by Shaun Attwood, tells Pablo's story as a suspect in the murder of CIA pilot Barry Seal; ISBN 978-1537637198

Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar (2017) by Virginia Vallejo, originally published by Penguin Random House in Spanish in 2007, and later translated to 16 languages.

News of a Kidnapping, (original Spanish title: Noticia de un secuestro) non-fiction 1996 book by Gabriel García Márquez, and published in English in 1997.

Two major feature films on Escobar, Escobar (2009) and Killing Pablo (2011), were announced in 2007. Details about them, and additional films about Escobar, are listed below.

, a 2001 American biographical film based on George Jung, a member of the Medellín Cartel; Escobar was portrayed by Cliff Curtis.

Pablo Escobar: The King of Coke (2007) is a TV movie documentary by National Geographic, featuring archival footage and commentary by stakeholders.

Escobar (2009) was delayed because of producer Oliver Stone's involvement with the George W. Bush biopic (2008). As of 2008, the release date of Escobar remained unconfirmed.[when? ] Regarding the film, Stone said: "This is a great project about a fascinating man who took on the system. I think I have to thank , and maybe even Ari Gold."

Killing Pablo (2011) was supposedly in development for several years, directed by Joe Carnahan. It was to be based on Mark Bowden's 2001 book of the same title, which in turn was based on his 31-part Philadelphia Inquirer series of articles on the subject. The cast was reported to include Christian Bale as Major Steve Jacoby and Venezuelan actor Édgar Ramírez as Escobar. In December 2008, Bob Yari, producer of Killing Pablo, filed for bankruptcy.

Escobar: Paradise Lost (2014) a romantic thriller in which a naive Canadian surfer falls in love with a girl who turns out to be Escobar's niece.

Loving Pablo (2017), Spanish film based on Virginia Vallejo's book Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar with Javier Bardem as Escobar, and Penélope Cruz as Virginia Vallejo.

American Made (2017), American biographical film based on Barry Seal; Escobar was portrayed by Mauricio Mejía.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022), American biopic parody loosely based on the life of "Weird Al" Yankovic; Arturo Castro portrays Escobar who is depicted as a Weird Al fan who kidnaps Weird Al's girlfriend, Madonna, to lure him to play at his fortieth birthday party. Weird Al instead murders him.

Television

In 2005, Court TV (now TruTV) crime documentary series Mugshots released an episode on Escobar titled "Pablo Escobar - Hunting The Druglord".

In the 2007 HBO television series, , actor Vincent Chase (played by Adrian Grenier) is cast as Escobar in a fictional film entitled Medellín.

One of ESPN's series films, The Two Escobars (2010), by directors Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, looks back at Colombia's World Cup run in 1994 and the relationship between sports and the country's criminal gangs - notably the Medellín narcotics cartel run by Escobar. The other Escobar in the film title refers to former Colombian defender Andrés Escobar (no relation to Pablo), who was shot and killed one month after conceding an own goal that contributed to the elimination of the Colombian national team from the 1994 FIFA World Cup.

Caracol TV produced a television series, (The Cartel), which began airing on 4 June 2008 where Escobar is portrayed by an unknown model when he is shot down by Cartel del Sur's hitmen.

Also Caracol TV produced a TV Series, Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal (Pablo Escobar, The Boss Of Evil), which began airing on 28 May 2012, and stars Andrés Parra as Pablo Escobar. It is based on Alonso Salazar's book La parábola de Pablo. Parra reprises his role in TV Series Football Dreams, a world of passion and El Señor de los Cielos (season 1). Parra has declared not to play the character again so as not to typecast himself.

RTI Producciones produced a TV Series for RCN Televisión, Tres Caínes, was released on 4 March 2013, which Escobar is portrayed by the colombian actor Juan Pablo Franco (who portrayed general Muriel Peraza in Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal) in the first phase of the series. Franco reprises his role in Surviving Escobar: Alias JJ.

The same year 2013, Fox Telecolombia produced for RCN Televisión a TV Series, Alias El Mexicano, released on 5 November 2013, which Escobar is portrayed by an unknown actor in a minor role.

A Netflix original television series depicting the story of Escobar, titled , was released on 28 August 2015, starring Brazilian actor Wagner Moura as Pablo. Season two premiered on the streaming service on 2 September 2016.

In 2016, Teleset and Sony Pictures Television produced for RCN Televisión the TV Series En la boca del lobo, was released on 16 August 2016, which Escobar is portrayed by Fabio Restrepo (who portrayed Javier Ortiz in Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal) as the character of Flavio Escolar.

National Geographic in 2016 broadcast a biography series that included an episode featuring Escobar.

On 24 January 2018, Netflix released the 68-minute-long documentary Countdown to Death: Pablo Escobar directed by Santiago Diaz and Pablo Martin Farina.

Killing Escobar was a documentary televised in the UK in 2021. It concerned a failed attempt by mercenaries, contracted by the Cali Cartel and led by Peter McAleese, to assassinate Escobar in 1989.

Fox Telecolombia produced in 2019 a TV Series, El General Naranjo, which aired on 24 May 2019, which Escobar is portrayed by the Colombian actor Federico Rivera.

The 2013 song "Pablo" by American rapper E-40 serves as an ode to the legacy of Pablo Escobar.

The 2016 album The Life of Pablo by American rapper Kanye West was named after the three Pablos who inspired and represented some part of the album, with one of them being Pablo Escobar.

Dubdogz's "Pablo Escobar" (feat. Charlott Boss), released in 2020, has garnered more than 5.6 million views for its official music video.

The 2018 hit single Narcos by the Atlanta based rap group Migos from their album Culture II makes references to Pablo Escobar as well as the Medellin Cartel, and the Netflix series Narcos

References

External links

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Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (; Spanish: [ˈpaβloeskoˈβaɾ]; 1 December 1949 - 2 December 1993) was a Colombian drug lord, narcoterrorist, and politician, who was the founder and sole leader of the Medellín Cartel.