Hunted by the French authorities for thirteen years, he is now wanted by all European police forces. Karim Ouali, a 48-year-old man of North African origin and French nationality, accused of the murder of his colleague in 2011, was added to the Europol “EU Most Wanted” list of Europe’s most wanted criminals on Monday, alongside 23 other fugitives, including Frenchman Dominique Delattre, a 62-year-old experienced robber.
On April 27, 2011, while working as a trainee air traffic controller at Basel/Mulhouse airport (Haut-Rhin), Karim Ouali murdered one of his colleagues with a Native American axe. “He suffered from persecutory mania and was in a psychotic state,” said the wanted notice from Europol, the criminal police agency which facilitates the exchange of intelligence between European Union (EU) countries.
Born in Paris (17th century), graduated from the National School of Civil Aviation in 1999, Karim Ouali began his career as an air traffic controller in the Paris region. But shortly after his arrival in training, the man aged around forty began to suffer from a delusion of persecution, according to his biography released at the time by the judicial police.
He had been on sick leave for almost three months due to psychological problems when he entered the secure control tower to deal eleven fatal blows with a hatchet to his colleague. “After committing his murder, he fled,” says Europol.
A carefully prepared escape
During searches of his apartment, the authorities discovered a letter addressed to a Swiss magazine. “What happened at the control tower of Basel-Mulhouse airport was inevitable” as a first line. In this text tinged with anti-Semitism, the author described September 11 as a “conspiracy” and believed that “Osama Bin Laden is strong, very strong. »
The man was “presented as crazy” but showed “a lot of care in preparing the facts and in his escape”, noted an investigator from the National Fugitive Search Brigade (BNRF) in a letter sent in 2013 to the judge in charge of the case.
Karim Ouali had in fact methodically organized his escape, withdrawing nearly 25,000 euros in cash and renting several cars, the boss of the BNRF had explained to Le Parisien. To save time, he also had the idea of buying a cell phone, leaving the box on his kitchen table, before putting it on standby and sending it by post to Switzerland. This ruse caused the police to lose two days of investigation.
Spotted in Hong Kong
In 2018, French justice learned that Karim Ouali had been spotted several times in previous years in Hong Kong, China. He even spent a few weeks in prison following an arrest for possession of false documents, before being released. But due to communication difficulties with local authorities, French justice was not notified until a few years later. A “failure” which had annoyed the family of the murdered colleague.
During a hearing before the judge responsible for investigating the case, in 2019, the victim’s relatives learned that the suspect had been able to travel freely by adding a small bar to the first letter of the name to transform it into “Quali » and that he would even have started a family. The last trace of him in China dates back to June 2021, when French police discovered an unpublished photo of him on a Hong Kong dating site in 2021.
Video“La vioque”, “control tower killer”: two French people added to Europol’s list of most wanted criminals
Already the subject of an Interpol red notice, Karim Ouali, alias “Ouali Aderfi”, had already been the subject of an international call for witnesses, as part of the “Europol Advent calendar”. To help recognize him, Europol specifies that he has tribal tattoos on his chest and thigh, as well as a mole on his right cheek. He has brown eyes and is 1m79 tall. The man speaks Arabic, French, English and Spanish.
A third Frenchman has been on Europol’s trombinoscope since 2022, Farid Toloun, 51, accused of murder.
