Gangland killing of a drug kingpin

If you live by the gun, so goes a popular saying, you will die by the gun. However, Kenyan drug lord Ibrahim Akasha was not known for his use of violence, but trading in drugs is not exactly a humble trade.

Drug dealing is known for cutthroat competition between cartels and spilling of blood for the slightest provocation.

So it was that Akasha died under the cruel hands of Amsterdam’s drug mafia as he pursued a debt owed him for a consignment of heroine he had delivered.

That day in May 2000, a lone gunman on a motorbike shot Akasha, sparking off a series of gangland execution’s that left Amsterdam flowing with blood.

The killing sparked off a series of gangland executions that left powerful drug lords dead, in what police believed was a result of mistrust between Yugoslav and Amsterdam’s cartels.

Akasha had been supplying drugs to the Dutch mafia for sometime.

According to police, Akasha supplied bhang to Mounir Barsoum, who had in turn sold it to a notorious Amsterdam drug king, Sam Klepper. However, the drug was sold on credit and Akasha never got his money at the time he expected it.

Mounir’s brother, Magdi Barsoum, acted as mediator in the bitter dispute.

Angered by the debt and pressured by police at home, Akasha apparently was desperate to get his cut. It was reported that at some point, he abducted a Yugoslav broker and held him for several months, insisting he would release him only after getting paid.

Back at home, he was in trouble. Police, who had charged him with drug trafficking back in 1996, had put him under surveillance.

It emerged that after months pestering the mafia to pay, Akasha was lured to Amsterdam, where he allegedly went to collect the money as well as meet other business contacts. He was said to have been invited there by Klepper.

Days after he left Kenya, surveillance intensified after heroin worth Sh900 million was discovered at one of his homes in Mombasa.

Dutch police were also alerted by their Kenyan counterparts and tracked his every move in the Netherlands.

On the day he was shot, Akasha walked hand-in-hand with his wife, Gazi Hayat, along one of Amsterdam’s crime-prone streets, Bloedstraat when a gunman on a motorbike pulled up from behind.

Expert hit man

The gunman was an expert hit man. Still on his bike, he emptied a burst of six rounds into Akasha as his wife and two Kenyan friends watched in horror. The bullets tore through his face, heart and abdomen, killing him instantly.

Later the same year, the killings began in what police said was a renewed war between Dutch and Yugoslav criminals. In October, Sam Klepper was killed in a public shooting among shoppers.

Magdi, who police suspected had shot Akasha, was gunned down by the same gangs in 2002.

In July 2004, Mounir was shot dead at the wheel of his car, and his 12-year-old daughter was hospitalised with gunshot wounds.

Shot on the same street Akasha had died four years earlier, Barsoum was the victim of a gunman on a powerful motorbike. The execution style was chillingly similar to Akasha’s.