Five International Assassins Arrested

Chloe Symons,

Correspondent (North America)

 

WASHINGTON – This week, the US federal officials uncovered and arrested three men who they believe to have been working as international assassins for large drug trafficking organisations. The officials involved in the case have said that the case is reminiscent of a crime and espionage novel, as the men are believed to have travelled internationally, being paid large sums of money to kill on behalf of their drug lords with court documents stating that one of the arrested men referred to his job as an assassin as being ‘fun’.

The three men were arrested just as a plot to kill a US federal agent for the sum of $8,00,000 was being planned for the imminent future with the defendants being described as “…ready, willing and eager to take cold hard cash to commit the cold-blooded murders of a DEA agent and informant.” US Attorney Preet Bharara has described the three arrestees as individuals who were prepared to use their military training for evil ends.

The man who is being described as the ringleader of the five arrested assassins is Joseph Hunter, 48, who goes by the nickname of ‘Rambo’. Hunter has a military background an has served in the US Army for 21 years between 1983-2004, where one of his roles, over an undisclosed period of his career, was as a sniper instructor. At a press conference regarding the arrest of Rambo and his twp accomplices, Bharara claimed that post-military service, Rambo turned to contract killing and became involved in arranging and carrying out the killing of multiple people across the world, although Bharara kept tight lipped as to the specific murders to which the assassins were involved.  Bharara emphasised the real international threat that the arrested posed, stating at the press conference “…because it was clear that Hunter was a threat to the public and to public safety around the world, our partners at the [DEA] Special Operations Division set out to stop him.”

Hunters recruitment methods for his assassination team were described to be centred around the search of resumes on the internet, from people around the world, with ex-military men being recruited by Hunter  from Germany, Poland and America.

When speaking to NBC news, Hunter’s family claimed that they had no knowledge that he had been arrested, but that “he was mysterious about his international activities…” Those ‘international activities’ have now been uncovered to be trips to Thailand in March, Mauritius in April and the Bahamas in June, all on behalf of a Colombian contractor who had hired Hunter and his recruits on a number of different ‘jobs’, with the most recent one being the proposed killing of a federal law enforcement official for the sum of $800,000.

The officers involved in the arrests of Rambo and his gang discovered that Visas and plane tickets had already been acquired and weapons such as submachine guns and 22-caliber pistols having been ordered in preparation for the murder.

Even though the arrests are very much recent, the details of the case that have been shared have shown all of the men to be money driven and undeterred by the murderous lengths that they have gone to in order to get their hands on such money.

The names of all men arrested are Joseph ‘Rambo’ Hunter, 48, Dennis Gogel, 27, Timothy Vamvakias,  42, Michael Filter, 29 and Slawomir Soborski, 40.

Image Courtesy: Viewminder (http://www.flickr.com/photos/light_seeker/6779884645/)