There’s a reason why parents have ALWAYS been extremely protective. With stories of serial killers and the horrendous crimes they’ve committed, growing up in a safe environment has always been an issue. Witnessing criminals like these growing up would’ve definitely made me keep an extra two eyes out for my loved ones!
Here are some of the most dangerous people the region has witnessed:
Ramadan Abdel Rehim Mansour (aka Al Tourbini)
Known as “Al-Tourbini” (Express Train) or “The Butcher of Gharbia”, he was the leader of a street gang in Egypt who was involved in the rape, torture and murder of at least 30 children in the course of seven years. His victims were children aged between 10 and 14 years and were mostly boys.
According to officials, Al Tourbini and some of his gang members would lure the victims – who were mostly street children – onto the carriage roofs of trains where they would rape and torture them and toss them onto the track sides. Others were thrown into the River Nile or buried alive. He was eventually captured on November 29, 2006 and sentenced to death in 2007.
Raya and Sakina
Egypt’s most famous serial killers began killing women in an Alexandrian neighborhood in the early days of the 20th century. They targeted women wearing gold jewelry or carrying large amount of money and lured them to a rented house where they performed their murders with the help of their husbands.
Raya and Sakina would go to the market where they would single out woman wearing the most jewelry. They would grab their attention by offering them some wares from the customs zone at cheap prices. Then they would invite the woman to their home to see these goods.
Once the victim was in their control, they would serve her a drugged beverage and Raya and Sakina’s husbands would strangle the victims and bury the bodies beneath the grounds of a rented apartment. With one clue after another unfolding, Raya and Sakina were linked to the murder of 17 young women and became the first women to be executed by the modern state of Egypt.
Mohammed Bijeh (aka Tehran Desert Vampire)
Bijeh, an Iranian serial killer, was convicted for the murder of at least 16 young boys near Tehran. He would trick children to go with him into the desert south of Tehran to hunt animals. He then poisoned or knocked his victims out, sexually abused them and buried them in shallow graves. He was found guilty of the murders of between 19 and 22 people, but locals believe the toll to be higher.
He was publicly executed in Pakdasht on March 16, 2005 with over 5,000 people in attendance. Relatives of the victims stabbed him and threw stones before watching him being pulled by a crane until he died.
Saeed Hanaei aka “The Spider Killer”
Hanaei targeted female prostitutes in the eastern city of Mashhad, but sometimes also targeted drug addicts. His motives were primarily focused on the ideal that he was helping cleanse the city of moral corruption.
Saeed Hanaei’s murders were known as “The Spider Killings” because he wrapped the bodies like a spider. All of his victims were prostitutes whom he picked up from the streets of Mashad, Iran. He took them to his house, where he strangled them with their headscarves and wrapped their bodies with their chadors.
He then dumped their bodies in the streets. Once a body was found, Saeed would return to the scene and even help police in carrying the corpse into an ambulance. He killed 16 women between 2000 and 2001 before he was caught and executed in 2002.
Mahin Qadri
Mahin Qadri is Iran’s first documented female serial killer. Inspired by Agatha Christie’s mystery novels, Qadri used the books for tips to help her lure her victims and murder them. She was convicted for killing six people between February 2008 and May 2009 in the city of Qazvin.
Most of her victims were elderly women she picked up outside prayer houses. Once they entered her car, she played mind games with them, telling them how much they reminded her of her own mother. She then offered them drugged juice to knock them out, after which she suffocated them to death and robbed them.
Mahin was sentenced to death and was hanged in a prison in Qazvin.
Ali Asghar Borujerdi
Known in Iran as Asghar Qatel (Asghar the Murderer), Borujerdi was the first Iranian serial killer and rapist reported in the 20th century. Moving to Iraq as a child with his family, he started assaulting, raping and later murdering adolescent boys in Baghdad since he was fourteen years old.
He escaped back to Iran in 1933 where he continued his murder spree in Tehran until he was eventually arrested and executed. Asghar Qatel was convicted for raping and killing 33 young adults, eight in Tehran and the rest in Baghdad.
Louay Omar Mohammed al-Taei
Dr Louay is an Iraqi medical doctor accused of murdering wounded policemen, soldiers and officials in Kirkuk while pretending to treat them. He claimed to have killed his victims because he hated Americans and what they’d done to Iraq.
A police investigation revealed that he had killed 43 people from October 2005 to March 2006. All of his victims were soldiers and policemen brought to the hospital for treatment. He killed them by switching off their breathing machines, cutting off electricity from operation theatres, reopening their wounds, or injecting them with lethal drugs.
Hadj Mohammed Mesfewi
Mesfewi was a Moroccan serial killer who was found to have killed at least 36 women. The bodies of 26 women were found under his shop and an additional ten were found buried on property owned by Mesfewi. He was aided by a 70-year-old female accomplice named Rahali, also reported as Annah, during the course of the murders.
They would lure young women to dinner, administer a narcotic to knock them out and then murder them in their sleep. After robbing them of any valuables they possessed, the victims were subsequently buried. They were also mutilated with a dagger.
Ali Reza Kordiyeh
Nicknamed the “Tehran Vampire,” Ali Reza Kordiyeh was an Iranian serial killer sentenced to death in 1997 for raping and killing nine girls and women in the city within four months.
He posed as a taxi driver to collect female victims and burned their bodies to make identification difficult. He once raped and killed a woman along with her nine-year-old daughter. He stabbed another victim 30 times.
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