One of Europe’s most wanted criminals is hiding in Hong Kong, French police say

One of Europe’s most wanted criminals, a man who allegedly axed his colleague to death in a shocking murder case in 2011, is on the loose in Hong Kong, authorities in France say.

French police told Sky News over the weekend that they are “99% sure” that Karim Ouali, 44, will commit “another gruesome criminal offence.”

“He’s a danger to anyone that he crosses,” said Jacques Croly, the head of the French fugitive arrest and search team. Ouali is on the EU’s Most Wanted Fugitives list.

It is not known when Ouali might have traveled to Hong Kong. But according to Sky News, he was briefly jailed in the city in 2014 when authorities learned that he had entered the city illegally with a forged passport.

It was not until 2018, however, that the French police received anonymous information that Ouali was in Hong Kong.

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He was reportedly in Macau before arriving in Hong Kong. Before that, police believed he was in Switzerland, which he was able to flee to after allegedly changing the O in his last name to Q on his passport.

There is “no further evidence that he left Hong Kong,” French police told Sky News. They added that Ouali is living undocumented in the city because he handed over his passport to Hong Kong authorities.

Police told Coconuts that it does not comment on individual cases.

According to the EU’s Most Wanted Fugitives List, Ouali was working as an air traffic controller at EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, an airport that sits at the border of France, Germany and Switzerland, when he murdered his colleague in April 2011.

“He was suffering from persecution mania and was in a psychotic state,” a description in the EU list reads.

In the Sky News report, French police made a public appeal for information about Ouali, calling on Hong Kong to be “fully aware of how dangerous this guy is.”

“We would be devastated if someday we hear that he was involved in another crime. We would not be able to forgive ourselves,” a police spokesperson said.