The Underworld Podcast - The Fall & Rise of Pakistan’s Escobar

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

In our final episode on the rise and fall and rise of the Pablo Escobar of Pakistan, he negotiates his own surrender to the DEA, maneuvers his way into the U.S. while dodging Pakistani intelligence agents out to kill him, and enjoys the hospitality of the American justice system. Then he returns to Pakistan, gets arrested again, and things get weird. Taliban weird. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Nigel Poore. We're the hosts and creators of Earhust. from PRX's Radiotopia. When we met, I was doing time at San Quentin State Prison in California. And I was coming in as a volunteer. The stories we tell are probably not what people expect from a prison podcast. Like cooking meals in a prison cell? Keeping little pets. Prison nicknames.

And trying to be a parent from inside. Stories about life on the inside, shared by those who live it. Find your hustle wherever you get your podcasts. December 13, 1995, at the Dubai International. airport. There's a man walking down a Jepbridge toward a business class seat. He's in his late 50s, he's thin, he's got a gray beard, but he can't read the ticket in his hand. He can't read anything in any language and never could. That hasn't stopped him from building a massive billion-dollar empire. He also owns one of the largest private homes on the face of the earth,

a 40-acre walled compound with an Olympic pool, a private zoo, and four artillery cannons on the porch, protected by an army of 5,000 armed tribesmen who have no problem coming down from the mountains and camping out if the boss man is threatened. Flanking him in the airport are two men, a DEA special agent and a posture-speaking DEA investigator. Nobody is dragging him. Nobody has cuffs out and he's walking toward that seat entirely, completely voluntarily. In fact, if he had to stay at his compound, nobody could have grabbed him. An hour ago, those same two federal agents drove this man across Dubai to a business full of his own associates and waited politely on the curb while he dropped off $70,000 in cash.

Money he had planned to take with him but decided not to when he was told it would be confiscated. This is 1995, remember? Dubai is not what it is now, and it won't have the reputation as a safe haven for mob bosses and top-tier criminals the world over for another 15 or so years. It's just a convenient stopover on a flight to Brooklyn. The man spent a year negotiating this flight through go-betweens, and the questions his people put to American agents during that year are preserved in the official record. They include, how many times a day will the U.S. Marshals beat him? Can he stay at the Waldorf Astoria, and can he bring a personal cook?

The DEA spent that same year doing two things. One, confirming through phone records and passports and identity cards that the man offered to surrender was actually him, and not in the agency's own written words, a stand-in willing to take the fall for him. They were genuinely worried about a body double. Two, putting its promises in writing in an actual letter from the DEA's top man in Pakistan, personally addressed to the most wanted drug fugitive in that country, guaranteeing him a free lawyer if he cannot afford one, the presumption of innocence, and if the matter resolves in his favor, an immediate flight home guaranteed. And that man is Ayub of Fridi, the Pablo Escobar of Pakistan, the kingpin at the top of

the country's biggest drug trafficking syndicate, just as that country has become the world's second most important heroin pipeline. He is a man who built himself up from a poor illiterate truck driver into a narco boss whose product stretches across the globe, even down to the mansions of Long Island, New York. In fact, some of the men who operated out of those mansions moving more than a billion dollars of his product are the reason he's even on this flight in the first place. Because when you're staring at 40 years or more of hard time, sometimes you're willing to give up the man at the very, very top of the pyramid, no matter how powerful or untouchable he may be. Around then, he'll tell the feds he feels that he is, quote, innocent of any criminal charges,

yet readily admits the trafficking in hashish. He adamantly denies ever being involved in heroin trafficking, which, fair enough. but some of the heavier charges he's facing are related to hashish and not heroin, so not the best defensive strategy. Afridi, though, still thinks he's got to play. He even believes bail is waiting for him in New York. He's wrong about that for now, but not in the long run. Because when you build up a network as powerful and as big as he has,

and the most monumental geopolitical events in the world come knocking on your front door, well, sometimes that door opens and there's a way out. This is the Underworld podcast. Welcome back to the Underworld podcast, the show where two journalists who have covered crime and conflict all over the planet and who have both at various points, boarded flights we probably should not have. Bring you a new story of international organized crime every single week. I'm Danny Gold in New York, joined by Sean Williams in Argentina, who, much like our main character this week, has also been escorted off flights by law enforcement, but not because he's a transnational narco, more because of what he's done in airplane bathrooms.

We'll talk about that later. Sean, I'm glad you eventually got the help that you needed. I just needed a strong coffee. That's it. I don't even know what that means. The business, patreon.com session, a world podcast for the bonus episodes and interviews. Underworldpod.com for merch, the Underworldpod.com for gmail.com for tips and corrections. and standing all for from Parts 1 and Part 2 remain open.

DEA, Customs, Brooklyn, Providence, 84-96, you know who you are. We're in the process of getting some very interesting documents and reaching out to some very interesting folks about the Stuart Newton episode and everything that comes with it. So expect more on that end. What else? What else? Please follow us on all the socials.

We'll we post the 75-second slop that is a requirement of this fake job. And if you're watching this YouTube, leave a comment. Can't think of anything to say. just tell us what you had for breakfast. We're interested when we are all slaves to the algorithm until we aren't. I mean, look, if you want to know about analog, beautiful analog life, I got like a mountain of index cards to show you, which, you know, pleasingly offline and nice to do

if I wasn't up until 2 a.m. every night crying. And that's not even over the top. I'm actually shedding tears. This is for your Cuba story. Just tell him. This is for the Cuba story. Yeah, yeah. And my kid just got conjunctive ideas, so he's back from school, which is...

I mean, that made me almost punch a hole in the wall for myself and not for him, which makes me a bad father on top of everything else as well. So life's good. Do you want to keep going? Are we going to stop it here? No, I think we better stop here. I'll save the rest for a paid session. Anyway, yeah, the socials, I...

I just realized that if you mentioned Pakistan on Instagram, you get about 4,000 comments than you normally get. So that's been interesting. I'm arguing with Pakistani guys on Twitter or on Instagram who don't understand the concept of a podcast and a 60 second clip. Really good use of my time. To recap, our last two episodes on this subject matter. Part one, an illiterate truck driver from the Khyber Pass. That's the ancient smuggling route used for centuries in tribal Pakistan, builds the biggest heroin and hashish operation in Pakistan on the back of the Afghan-Soviet war.

buys the parliament seat, gets crowned the king of Khyber heroin, and ends up a fugitive from a sealed Brooklyn indictment, untouchable behind his own walls. He also runs a massive trucking company, which takes weapons, sometimes purchased by the CIA or the ISI, that's Pakistan's Secret Service, sometimes by the Saudis, up to the Afghan Mujahideen to take on the Soviet military that has invaded Afghanistan. Those trucks take down the opium and heroin and hash. So it's a nice symbiotic relationship right there. And not ISI is not the Secret Service, right? It's like the intelligence. And military intelligence, isn't it right? Yeah, military challenges.

Yeah, yeah. Now, in part two, we blew the doors off the American end in a story that has never really been told before. But by the time you're hearing this, I'm sure has been ripped off by all the YouTube and podcast Gryfters out there. That is the story of Stuart Newton, masterful drug smuggler, a Long Island buyer-Referee's product with 16 Aalusis who travels to Pakistan himself to set up a billion-dollar or has trafficking ring. Does it quietly and peacefully, ends up becoming the biggest ever convicted

drug trafficker in New England at the time and suffering the biggest ever narco acid Caesar. I can't even say that word seizure in the U.S., which happens after it gets cracked open by small town Rhode Island cops. Nuding gets convicted in his first trial in Rhode Island, then gives up some info on the man from part one, Iba Fridi, as do a few others, as he's about to start a second trial in Brooklyn. And now, what happens next? This is the finale, if you will, of the three-parter on Ayuba Fridi and Stuart Newton. So the arrest of Newton in June 1988 did not slow this operation down.

It amputates the American end mid-deal, right? They were talking about sending another package over, but the tribal areas kept shipping product. I mean, yeah, what else are they going to do? The last thing you want is, like, thousands of young Pashtuns with no money and loads of guns. So actually, yeah, we've probably got evidence for what happens when that occurs. Have we not by now? I mean, in every single conflict ever. Yeah, bad things happen.

So while Newton sat in Otisville looking at 40 years, that's the prison in upstate New York, while the trial played out in Providence and while marshals hauled off the cars and mansions and the Swiss accounts drained into the U.S. Treasury, Ayberfridi was at the absolute peak of his power. The DEA's own cable traffic described as an organization in the language that bureaucracy saves for things it genuinely cannot stop. The single most prolific heroin and hashis trafficking operation in Pakistan. The king of Khyber heroin

is running the biggest drug-drug operation in South Asia out of a fort with his name on the gate. The DA knows it. They know where he is. Pakistan's government can't touch him or won't, and he has a seat in parliament, if you guys remember. And the empire has gone legit on the surface the way empires do.

His partner, Iqbal Beg, the Lahore broker who set up the Newton deal, now owns cinemas. He owns a textile mill and a pizza restaurant, which I'm sorry, as someone who maybe hasn't eaten pizza in South Asia, but has had a lot of pizza in Asia and the Middle East, there is absolutely no way that pizza isn't god awful. Probably covered in like black olives and corn, just disgusting. Oh, pizza in Cuba, like yellow hub caps, only less appetizing. I mean, the only thing I've had that's worse than that is that Chicago deep dish nonsense. What is that all about?

It's a casserole, my friends. I had nachos once in Erbil in northern Iraq that were just chips with like a tiny piece of American cheese on them and like one slice of a jalapeno. And they were like nachos on the menu. I would take that to be honest in that, Bill. Yeah. It was awful. Another partner has a battery factory and the factory is exactly what you think it is. Heroin is moving inside industrial shipments.

Curriers are swallowing balloons and taking their chances. One of them dies when a balloon bursts inside. him on the route and then the partner actually takes over the factory. A DEA agent would later describe the entire leadership to the ICIJ as, quote, a social club of misfits. There we go. New Patreon subscribers incoming. But in Brooklyn, the men who used to carry their product are sitting down with prosecutors

and they are starting to talk. And the feds are no doubt getting excited because it is extremely rare that the American end of something like this has met the actual guy at the top of the other side. Think about it. How many American dealers met? Pablo or Chapo in person. I actually, I don't know off the top of my head, but it's got to be pretty small, if any. I mean, I guess the Flores twins, right?

The dude from below, like, you're talking about like a handful of people, Max. Yeah, yeah, yeah, way under 10. I mean, like Barry Seale, the pilot, and then I just found out about Greg Pahoulis, but that is a story for another day. Do you know about this guy? I do not know about this guy. All right. Yeah, we will do a show on this further down the line.

Well, tell me something. I can be a line. Aspiring soccer star gets an injury, falls out of the game, ends up working for the Medellin cartel meets Pablo. Big Netflix still. We get rich. And signara to freelance journalism. Moving on. Nuding gives a 14-page sworn affidavit.

He runs down everything. God, I'm really trying hard to get that affidavit. We're filing foias. We're going to get it. Actually, I don't want to say that because I don't want people to start doing that and taking away from us. so I'm not going to mention that. Okay. Nuding gives a sworn affidavit.

He runs down everything. The trips to Pakistan, the handshake with the warlord, the desert rainstorm, the cash handed over in Singapore. And then the kicker we didn't get into too much last episode. He swears in the negotiations, we're still alive, still running right up to the morning of his own arrest. He was still organizing for the next 20-ton load the morning they took him at LaGuardia Airport in Queens.

And there's more. There was a side agreement Newton never told anyone about. to ship a lot to Canada and personally collect the drug debts that Pakistanis were owed from several Canadians. Stort Newton, the man the DEA called the biggest drug dealer in New England, have been moonlighting as the Pakistani's North American collections agent, which is interesting because there's still no violence he had a hand in order that we know about, right? And you think that would have come up in this gigantic trial, which is a hard thing to accomplish if you're working in drug dealer collections.

And if you're a drug dealer on that scale in the first place, right? But anyway, Newton puts all of this on paper for the feds to bill the case on a freebie. And Newton's money man who organizes tens of millions of dollars cash in Swiss bank accounts and other banks across 10 countries, who also helped move money to a fridie and his crew. He met them. He puts down seven pages, plus an earlier confession offering to walk the DEA agent to the supplier's own house in Singapore. He was the one grabbed in Switzerland, in Geneva, then extradited. He also discloses that there was cash delivered by hand there on occasion.

to Afrii himself, the man at the top, personally pocketing the American proceeds in a hotel room identified by his own banker. The third man, Robert Venizia, adds seven more pages. Honestly, he's one of the genuine mysteries in the record, and there are a lot of them. What we know is exactly this. He submitted a seven-page affidavit

that traveled inside the Afrii extradition, package alongside Newton's 14 pages and Bloomfield 7, and the government's 1996 memo lists his name and page count alongside the others. That's it. No role described, no background, no press coverage, no trial testimony on record. He's not among the name defendants in Rhode Island. He's not in the later sweep coverage after Newton talks, just a name and a page count in a footnote of a court filing. One of many pieces of paperwork we are working on getting.

And it's not just the affidavits. Newton picks a freeze face out of a photo array. So you've got three people, the buyer, the banker, and the associate. They're all singing, you know, three-part harmony. and in 1991, a Brooklyn grand jury turned the songbook into Case 960 and Seals it. That was a little Sean-esque, right? The little singing songbook metaphor stuff. That's some stuff you would write in Harper's right there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The indictment names of Fridi and his three partners, Anwar Katak, Iq Balbaig, and Tarik Bhat. It takes some time, but soon enough, the extradition machinery starts grinding. Pakistan gets squeezed. The reachable names start disappearing into Pakistani custody one by one. That's big, that's Katak, and that's butt. Every road in the case runs to one gate in the Khyber Pass, where our man, Ayuba Fridi, is just hanging out, having a good time.

So let's establish the situation as 1994 closes. The United States has a sealed, then unsealed indictment, 50 plus tons in the eastern district of New York. Pakistan has extradition proceedings, and none of it matters because Ayuba Fridi lives in the tribal belt where, per the government's own words from part one, Pakistani law just doesn't apply and has no authority, and American officials are not even allowed to enter. He cannot be arrested. He cannot be extradited. He cannot be touched. The most wanted DEA fugitive in Pakistan and likely South Asia, I would guess, has fought the world's only superpower to complete standstill by the simple tactic of staying home.

Very good. How does the tribal area work at this time then? Is it functioning as a de facto independent state? Because I think there's like a Pashtun code or something, right? There's the famous sort of this like the canon in Albania, right? I think there's like a sort of set of laws. But is it, the idea there's a like a chunk of your own sovereign territory that you can't enter and your laws don't apply and you can't do anything about this. It's pretty strange, right? I don't really know how that was. There's situations like that. I feel like in countries like Pakistan.

I assume it's just semi-autonomous, you know? But they're like, we can't go in. I mean, I guess, yeah, there's more going on, right? You know, I would think that like a pretty simple mountain tribesman like himself would be okay with that, just kind of staying home hanging out in the giant compound. Plenty of Mexican cartel bosses that hold up in the mountains of say Sinolawa. Granted, they lived a life of a lot more luxury and kind of comfort. They did this for decades, right? And there's like Endrongetta bosses that live in like secret bunkers for decades, right?

Isn't that a thing? And you know, those guys are used to a better life, the drug lords and the end that I get to guys. They're much better life than like a Pakistani tribesman, right? even a rich one. Yeah, I mean, unless you really, really like cricket and dates, it's probably not for you. But, I mean, there was that guy, Ernesto Fazzerlari, fat Salari, he was on the run for 20 years. I think he got caught in 2016, and he spent 10 other than the mountains and mostly in like a square, a 10 square meter bunker, which these days would cost half your wages, wouldn't it? Huh?

Is that your, what's that, who's that impression of something like? I don't know who that guy is. No, do you think I should bring him back? I thought you were doing a character, like a bit. Yeah, no, no, no, I was, actually. I sort of inadvertently skipped into another character, but I don't know who it is, and I don't know if I'm going to bring it back.

I might just kill him there on the spot. A Fridi, though, despite, like, you know, someone he would think is used to, like, rough times, it's kind of wearing on him. While some reports actually put him in Kabul, most say he doesn't leave his own property. The DEA's reports describe a man who calls himself a virtual prisoner

in his own fortress. He's convinced, and this is in the record, that the ISI, his own country's intelligence service, has him under constant surveillance. So he does not leave the tribal errors by that story for any meeting ever, because he's also convinced the ISI is planning on taking him out, which if you know anything about the ISA and the way they operate, it is dirty as hell, and he's probably right. His co-defendants, Baye, Katok, and Butt are rotting through endless extradition hearings in Pakistan, and he has been told correctly. that time in a Pakistani cell earns him exactly zero credit

against an American sentence. His political career has already finished. He's got no immunity. The power structure he at his hookse in has abandoned him. I'm actually kind of surprised his partners can't bribe their way out of jail, to be honest with you. On January 24, 1995, the hammer drops. Pakistan's anti-narcotics force announces it has frozen

all of his assets. All of them. The fortune, the properties, 40 years of the road money, gone at the stroke of a pen, he cannot read. Though, to be fair, I assume the guy probably has a whole lot of cash or gold stored around him. But even so, we know he had these massive bank accounts. They appear to be completely shut off.

So the king runs the numbers in his head, and he arrives at a conclusion that's probably a bad idea, or would feel that way if we hadn't seen quite a few Mexican narcos making similar calls in recent years. The DEA's own summary of his thinking is that from the reports of the agent who dealt with him, Afridi believes that if he could obtain an acquittal in the U.S., he can come back to Pakistan as a free man and regain his former political influence. He's not fleeing to America, right? He's not cutting a deal with America. He's planning to win, though I guess showing up in the first place is almost like cutting a deal, right?

But he figures he's going to fly to Brooklyn, beat the case, fly home vindicated, and to reenter politics as the man who faced down American courts and walked out clean. He is kind of, you know, running for office through a federal courtroom in the U.S. And he has evidence that this can work because in October 1993, two other Pakistani defendants were exorited to the U.S., tried in federal court in Boston, and acquitted both of them sent home freeman, and the record says explicitly that their acquittals encouraged to free. He also wants, and this isn't a DA cable,

to be the first of the four co-defendants to arrive in America, because arriving first voluntarily would give, quote, the appearance of innocence. Some weapons-grade hubris here. I mean, you'd make a great podcaster, and I haven't made that comment at least three episodes. now. Every now and then, someone would die. Risk. True stories, no

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I mean, I think that, like, he's probably getting some bad advice. Occam's raising, man. Yeah, yeah. There's just one problem with this plan. How does the most wanted man in Pakistan who trusts no one who thinks he's going to be killed if he leaves his property,

who won't leave his own land, open negotiations with the DEA? The answer is the way that you do everything in the tribal belt, or actually kind of, you know, old school Brooklyn in general, well, at least back in the day, you get a guy who knows a guy and those guys talk and they talk to another guy.

That's it. You get a guy. In the fall of 1994, he makes his first attempt to the proper channels. A New York lawyer opens a channel to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn corresponding with an assistant U.S. attorney about the terms of a possible cooperation are surrendered. And it goes nowhere, for the most bureaucratic reason imaginable.

For the government's own later filing, the Brooklyn office could not get approval from Washington, D.C., to even speak with a free D. The prosecutors who spent the decade building the case against this man were not allowed to take his call. So the lawyer channel stalls out and Afridi says screw it. Lawyers, they haven't done anything for me. I'm going to figure it out myself. In December of 1994, a man named Barkat Shah of Peshawar, a self-described go-between for Afridi, walks into the orbit of the DEA's Islamabad country office with a message.

IA. Fridi would like to discuss the possibility of his self-surrender. And the DA is like, you know, we don't believe you. This sounds like nonsense. And so begins one of the strangest verification processes in law enforcement history. Shah hands over a phone number for Afridi. The DA runs it through their daily base and gets nothing. But during a follow-up call, conducted in posture between Afrii and the DA's posture-speaking investigative aid,

a man named Ali Bangash. And remember Bangash his name because he comes up later. Afrii offers up a second number, his private number, and urges Bangash to call him on that. That number comes back in the DA's files as belonging to Aybafridi, which the case notes with bureaucratic satisfaction lends credibility that the speaker actually was who he claimed to be. Oh, I like this. Just call people up. Life was a lot more fun with William there, wasn't it? Yeah, it's a little boring, but sure. Still not enough, right? The agency is kind of worried, and they put this in writing that they're being offered a stand-in willing to take the fall for him,

basically like a body double. They demand documents. And on December 20th, Barcott Shah shows up at the DA office carrying the good stuff. Afridi's official blue Pakistani passport, identifying him as a member of the National Assembly, his National Assembly credentials, his Polaroid Parliamentary ID with the seal of Pakistan, his national identity card issued 1978, and the DA photocopies everything, circulates it around the embassy, and the consensus comes back that it's all him and it's genuine. And then Shaw mentioned something almost in passing, that the passport has visa and entry stamps for Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan in December of 1992.

And Chalk explains that he took a trip of Friddy traveled with the then-prime. Prime Minister of Pakistan on an official visit to Japan as a member of the National Assembly. Which is interesting because in December of 1992, Ayuba Fridi was under sealed U.S. federal indictment had been for over a year. And he's just like part of an official delegation abroad with the prime minister. It just kind of shows you how powerful he was. I guess he was a minister, but like, yeah, I guess that shows you a lot about Pakistan politics as well. And that PM would have been Nawaz Sharif.

It was all over like this huge bank fraud case when he was dishing out cash to politicians. to rig a vote and his kids pop up in half the Panama papers like millions of dollars of property all over the world

so maybe go to Japan with the convicted or an indicted Rabaher in Kingpin might not even be the most controversial thing

you did or any Pakistani PM I mean the more the more controversial stuff we say about Pakistan the more we get huge on social media right?

Yes yes 100% Oh my god Pakistan is the worst country in the world No I think you could say that or you could say to the best

It doesn't matter. You're just going to get a million bots giving you views and hits. It really is something like a fascinating phenomenon. India, guys, am I right? I'm staying out of this one, bud. So it's real, right? It's him. And now the DEA is to figure out how you physically take custody.

A freeze position relay through his people is that he has the ability to meet the EA agents, quote, anywhere in the world, except for, of course, in Pakistan, where he is. So the DEA drafts a plan in late January of 1995 and is kind of kind of Got like the Cold War spy intrigue mystique to it, right? Afridi's going to get himself to Frankfurt, Germany. Agents are going to meet him at Frankfurt, main international airport, and walk him next door. And next door is doing a lot of work here, because next door is the U.S. Air Force base.

The two facilities basically share runways. There, they're going to load him onto a U.S. Air Force aircraft. And not just any aircraft, the cable specifically wants a plane that can be refueled in flight, and it explains why, so that there is no stop over anywhere, where Fridi, could have a change of heart and claim political asylum. Also, the cable notes, the moment the wheels leave the ground on a U.S. registered military aircraft, he's effectively in custody. So they're basically designing a flight with like no exits, which again, I don't know,

man, 50 tons of halves. This sounds like a lot of back and forth for like whatever he's going to get. Yeah. Washington approves the Air Force assets on January 25th, which brings us to January 30th, 1995 and the front lawn that's from our cold open. Because Afridi still won't come out. The DEA goes to the family. Agents strive to a house on Park Road in Peshwar, the home of one of Afrii's nephews,

with DEA surveillance posted outside, and a meeting happens on the front lawn. The agents bring a physical letter from the DEA's country to attach to Pakistan addressed personally to Ayuba Fridi. It opens, quote, thank you for your kind patience with me so far. And it explains that he would have liked to meet Afridi personally, but, quote, I felt that if I had, your safety could have possibly been placed in jeopardy. And the agent's note attached to the cable explains what that's about. Afridi had expressed concern that he was under constant surveillance by the ISI

and would not leave the tribal areas for any face-to-face meeting. The letter also starts getting persuasive. It says, your friends, Bay, Kotuk, and Butt, they're very close to being sent to the U.S. If they arrive before you do, they're probably going to tell us things about you that you may or may not be true, and you're not going to be there to defend yourself. Quote, by arriving first, you will be taking the strategic advantage away from them. The DA is basically coaching him on, you know, cooperation game theory. Get there before your quote, co-defense flip on you.

This is a race and the gun has already been fired, the starting gun, not the Kalishnikov. And then it guarantees, quote, you will be treated with all the respect and dignity you deserve. You cannot afford it. You'll be provided free legal assistance upon your arrival in my country, regardless of how you got there. This is guaranteed. You will never have to testify. You are considered innocent unless it can be proven otherwise. If the matter is resolved in your favor, you will immediately be returned home.

This I also guarantee. And it closes, I'm in a position to quietly help you make the long journey. All you have to do is get yourself to Frankfurt. My men will meet you at the gate. Please give us the opportunity to help you. I await your answer. Very formal, very polite. A nice guy.

Who wouldn't respond to this letter? So they have the meeting. It lasts about 45 minutes. And the next day, a nephew delivers a free's answer. to the DEA office. A handwritten note in rough English. He still wants a face-to-face meeting with the DEA representative before committing.

And the note says something else, the closest thing to a public defense he ever gave. The charges against them, he writes, are, quote, political revenge carried out by the government of Pakistan. This is the same Pakistani government he's ripped on state visits. I mean, he was before.

But you know? I guess Pakistani politics. Yeah, it might be a bit like that. Be your own people. In late February 1995, the face-to-face happens. A Pashto speaking investigator by himself gets driven by Afri's nephew up into the tribal areas, into the fortress, the compound from our part one called open and the whole thing before, the walls, the cannons, the chickens, to meet Ayuribu Frii face to face,

flanked by his brother and his nephew on his ground, on his terms. And Fridi tells him that he's grateful for the DDA's efforts and committed to letting them get him out of Pakistan. The most wanted man in the country has agreed to finally surrender. It's happening. February 1995, Frankfurt is basically booked. The Air Force is standing by. And then his lawyer finds out. The New York attorney from the stalled proper channels track from before gets to his client.

And in February 1995, per the record, a free-dee after a consultation with him, says he's not going to travel. The trip is off, which, I mean, look, from a defense lawyer's chair, like, it's kind of good advice. Like, just don't go, bud, just don't go. Do not fly voluntarily into a 120-year federal indictment on the strength of a nice letter. The lawyer even flies to Pakistan himself in March of 1995 and meets Afridi in person, which, you know, respect. And then in April of 1995, Began-Katak's appeals in Pakistan run out, and they are extradited to Brooklyn, which is exactly what the letter warned of Free D was going to happen. And then in May of 1995, all his properties are ordered confiscated by Pakistan. that in October the same year,

the lawyer just loses contact with him because Afridi has made his decision finally and it's not the lawyer's plan. And late that October, the phone rings at the DA again. Afriety, he's reinitiating contact. He's ready to move for real this time. And move, he does. With the help of the U.S.,

Afridy sneaks out of Pakistan into Afghanistan, the details of that help are kind of not elaborated on. No one really knows, but we can paint a picture from my imagination, which is like real cloak and dagger shit. You know, Maybe he dresses up as a shepherd and they sneak him out with like a flock of sheep. Maybe he dresses up as a woman.

Through a burq on. I mean, how could you not? Like that, you could just do that. The beauty of podcasting and this new era of just terrible media practices, so you can just throw some wild speculation out there and just go with it, you know? Yeah, I heard he got like on all fours and went in as a goat. Someone else told me he actually sort of shaved his entire body and went in as a small child, like a chess champion.

You know, you always take it a little too far. Like, I'll have it at like a six. And you go to a 12 pretty, just pretty quickly. And that's why I'm such a fun guy. Anyway, he moves out of the Northwest Frontier through Jalalabad. The Afghan city, his trucks have been running, you know, his whole lifetime. From Afghanistan, a commercial flight to Dubai, which brings us to the cold open December 12, 1995, in Dubai. He surrenders to a special agent and has read his Miranda rights, which he,

he waves. I mean, reading, Miranda writes to like a guy like that. It's kind of funny, actually. Fridi's packed for his trip and among his personal effects is approximately $100,000 in American $100 bills in cash in his bags. And the feds have to explain to him that it's just going to be taken away when he lands. So the feds actually escort him out of the Dubai airport to a local business so we can drop off 70K of it to like a friend for safekeeping. That's also, like this whole thing is also how he ends up on a commercial flight,

flying business class to his own arraignment. The flight lands, the rest of the cash is seized, and Ayuba Fridi, 57 years old, first time in America. First time in the West is arraigned in Brooklyn Federal Court in the Eastern District of New York on the indictment you watched get built in our previous episode. It's actually in the same courthouse where Stuart Newton earlier pleaded out to the second case that was being built against him. This could have been coming to America too. I mean, it would have been a harder sell given what was going on with like the World Trade Center bombings and Al Qaeda, but, you know, could have been good. Nothing to do with coming America. What are you talking about?

The government's own deputy narcotics chief stands in front of reporters and says the quiet part out loud, quote, we can't figure it out. He claims he wants to prove his innocence. And at the bail hearing, Afridi has a court-appointed lawyer,

which, like, why? He literally had all this money on him. Bail is denied, contrary to what Afridi thought he was promised, and that's the kind of first step that we're seeing that maybe he's going to get a little bit more than he bargained for.

1996 is the year of the lawyers. Every year is the lawyer of the lawyers when it comes down to it. And I'm going to keep it short because you guys know trial talk is boring and we skip it on the show. Fridi upgrades from his court appointed lawyer to a pay lawyer who takes some shots, but they don't really work out. And then the record just kind of goes quiet. The year is 1996 through 1998 of Friddy's actual American prison time produced no visitors accounts, no jailhouse interviews, nothing with his voice in it. But there's a few notable things like Friddy from inside working calls to was a little bit of imprisoned, co-defendant, and Katak, you know, just kind of running through things and seeing what's

going on. And while he sits there, the only journalism of his American years gets filed from the other side of the earth, which is October 1997, a Forbes writer drives the Khyber Pass Road, past the mile blank wall and files the quote, for the time being, his Kiber Palace stands empty. So another guy goes to the palace and hangs out. But back to the trial in 1997, the man who flew to America to be acquitted pleads guilty. He serves at his time, and in August 1999, the U.S. deports him back to Pakistan. So I think he serves like basically three and a half years, maybe closer to four, which the whole thing seems like a lot of hassle for three years and three and a half years at Otisville, which like is not a bad person.

I don't know, man. Like, doesn't it sit like a lot of, you're going to use Air Force planes for like, you know, I don't even know how much it costs to fly them for a guy to get three and a half years? It's like a gun possessing charge in New York City. So he got found guilty of like drug trafficking charges that he got three and a half years for. Hash, not heroin. Huh. But quite a lot of hash, but still a big amount. Not like, yeah.

A lot, a lot of hash. Yeah. I don't know, man. You know, he had helped out the Americans with trucks. So maybe that was factored in a bit. Although I don't think the feds necessarily listen to the CIA when it comes to that sort of thing. But, yeah, pretty sweet deal. all things considered.

But he's not exactly free because he gets back to Pakistan at the end of the summer of 1999 and Pakistani authorities also want their pound of flesh. Ayuribati lands in Karachi and the authorities arrest him on the tarmac. Why, you know, all of a sudden

they have this appetite for justice after so many years of him being untouchable because everything that had made him untouchable is completely gone. The war economy's history, the political machine that he was a part of is completely gone. The assets are,

seized, the American aura is like completely spent. Remember way back in part one, we had this throwaway line about a seizure outside the hub dam in Pakistan in 1985, but something like 70 and a half tons headed for Europe somewhere. By November of 2001, Afridis convicted for that load and sentenced to seven years, usually about four to five years in the Pakistani justice system. But a mere five days after his conviction, there's a report of a raid on a compound at Lahore, where four tons of hash are confiscated and five men are arrested, one of whom is reported to be Ayuba Fridi.

It's a couple of theories on how this happens. One is simply that his time and detention is counted against the sentence. Another is that it's a routine bail pending appeal, granted with the traditional speed Pakistani courts reserved for this particular defendant, because, you know, big money guy. And the third option, the most fun, the one that you want to run with in headlines, is that someone let them out because it's 10 weeks after September 11th,

and things in the region are about to change and they need help. Now, we don't know this. It's never been verified, and it's only been reported by an Indian publication and like maybe a few smaller outlets. So the correct thing to do is take it with a grain of salt, even though it makes the story 10 times better and pretty much every podcast out there, most of whom don't do anything, even a proxion responsible reporting would run with it. But I think apply some, not all, but some caution because me and Sean are responsible,

responsible people. In the months after 9-11, reporting services, most prominently in the Indian magazine outlook, and an analysis by the veteran Indian intelligence writer B. Rahman, claiming that the ISI, at the CIA's request, quietly released Iberfridi so that he could do for the new American war what he'd done for the old one against the Soviets. Work his tribal networks across the Duran line, which is the line that splits Afghanistan and Pakistan, this time to rally Pashtun tribes against the Taliban. The old smuggler becomes an instrument of the new war on terror.

Per that reporting, the mission went absolutely nowhere. The tribes were not buying it, and the asset produced nothing. And I want to be completely clear about the sourcing. No American agency has ever confirmed a word of it. No Pakistani agency has ever confirmed a word of it. How much do you trust Indian publications on Pakistani things like this? I don't know. Sean, you tell me.

And it remains attributed reporting, not established fact. But I will say this. out of the three reasons I mentioned, it does kind of line up with the calendar, though there is a fourth explanation, which I think is probably like the, what is it, Akams Razor one,

which is that in a notoriously corrupt system, he just bribed his way out with the massive amounts of money that he had. Yeah, I mean, maybe this could be a new thing that, like,

I pour scorn on Pakistan and Pakistani media and you did the same in India and we see who can get the most hate mail or social media followers. No Indian commenters have ever yelled at me and called me an idiot for saying that there was a desert outside Karachi,

which if you Google it, there is. It's called the damn, damn beach desert, dude. It's less than two hours to the center of Karachi. It's like 80 kilometers. That's right outside Karachi,

man, you know? Come on. It's right there. It's called the damn desert beach. It's literally on the water. It's on the water. It's exactly where you want to be for staging has to be smuggled onto a ship.

These guys are all freaking in my comments. Relax. You relax, man. Anyway, you're right, I should relax. Anyway, a couple years later, 2003, that hash arrest that comes to a head, and a freeze actually convicted and sentenced to death. And essentially, nobody outside Pakistan noticed. There's no wire reports, no Brooklyn press conference, nobody cares. The man who was front page news in New York in 1995 gets a death sentence in 2003 from his own country,

and the world has moved on to other mountains. A year or two later, he's ordered to appear. year before the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the appeal proceedings, and he just like doesn't, doesn't go, doesn't show up, which I can tell you, don't do that in New York because a clerical paperwork error will result in you getting arrested for driving out a license, which is bullshit because it's not your fault because the town court didn't report anything to the safety and Vee, Sean, and then you got to go to court with a misdemeanor on the trial. And it ruins your Labor Day weekend.

This is another story about, really, IAbefridi, right? Yeah, yeah, basically. I mean, it doesn't ruin your weekend, but it definitely throws a hijinks in your plans. You know what I'm saying? The outlaw life, Sean, I'm telling you. It's the, it seems like it's awful, but, you know, the consequences, they come hard and fast.

Where was I? Yeah, nothing happens. No manhunt, no raid. No consequences of any kind at any point ever because he's home. He's in Landi Kotal, the tribal belt, untouchable once again. And besides, Pakistan at that point, much, much bigger problems.

And a free-dee, even at 70, does he sit back and enjoy retirement, Sean. He does not because he is a go-getter. Does he take up new hobbies? Is he playing pickleball? Does he get the shuffleboard? He does not. He's got something most of you don't know anything about.

It's called work ethic. So one opportunity to get shut down, he doesn't bitch and moaned on Instagram about how life is unfair and the system is holding him down. He gets back to work, Sean. He figures it out. Figure it out, Sean. That's what I always say.

Oh, you really just, You really just stepped it up a notch in the last couple of minutes. I mean, I got a burst of energy. Dumping on me, you know? I've got little pieces of paper with, like, actual words on them. I'm working at the cold face, man. Not doing well, physically or mentally.

Anyway, Hashich is done for, heroin is done for. So it moves on to one of our favorite, favorite market, a tried and true smugglers paradise product, cigarettes. Sweet, sweet cigarettes. God, I miss smoking. I wish you could still. advertise cigarettes, I would love to run like Camelite ads on the show. Can you imagine in crowds

smoke them on while we record? God, it'd be the most like morally good podcast adverts that are going around at the moment anyway. Just like, so we'd be like, when I did to take a break from podcasting, I light up a camel light and it's just smoking a cigarette on air like in the middle of episode. I would love that. Dude, that would be such a sick ad. I'd have the, I got the Joe Camble sunglasses on. We would just, we would kill it. But of course,

you can't have anything good ever in this country. They shut down our advertising money. So, yeah, he gets into making bootleg cigarettes, opening up six factories in the tribal belt, pressing fake Marlboros, fake camels,

fake 555s, and moving them along the old routes, right, through Central Asia, through China, into Africa. The same corridors, the same trucks, the same tribal logistics network

that moved gold in the 60s and hash in the 70s, heroin and also in the 80s, now moving knockoff smokes at a scale in the 2000s. Yeah, I mean, it almost sounds quaint when we're talking about like fentanyl and heroin and stuff, but if you smoke literally any cigarette anywhere outside Europe or the U.S., or maybe inside, you'll know that it's a colossal thing today. I think I read somewhere that it's like $40 billion a year from fake cigarettes,

but it's got to be way more than that, right? Like, that's just the tax that they don't get. We've talked about it in like half a dozen hours. episode. It's a very, I mean, the Australia one was big. They ended on Getta, it's big in the Balkans. Like, cigarette smoking is, people do it in New York. You know, you smoggle from the Indian reservation and sell it in the bodega for, for half the price and don't have to pay taxes and you make a killing. There's entire network's doing it. That's why you can buy a lucy for 50 cents sometimes. Anyway, this is the guy, Afridi, he runs a truck

and company, and the road doesn't care what's in the boxes or in the trucks, right? Marlboro is at a morphing base and the margins are still beautiful and nobody exredites you these days or those days over cigarettes. I mean, I guess sometimes they do, but not in Pakistan. But the neighborhood, my friend, has changed. The price of business has gone up because yesterday's price is never today's price. And the tribal areas of his old age are now militant jihadi country. The cigarette network's protection budget includes $36,000 a month.

I was it, Lashkar-e Islam, which is a jihadi terrorist group founded in 2004. And he's also got to pay off the Pakistani Taliban. He's got to pay rent on his own rule that he used to control. no nostalgia to the game as it proving this even more and now his compound upgrades to 20-foot walls and barbed wire fences because the neighborhood has changed.

He's still got his tribesmen and reportedly some anti-aircraft weaponing now but you know, you can never be too careful. And alongside all of it, he's still doing the philanthropy because you know, brand maintenance requires you got to keep this stuff up. So he's water pumps for the villages,

streets, paving, lightning, lightning, lighting, mosques, madrasas, dispute settled, petitioners received. To the neighbors of Landy Kotel, the illiterate old man behind the wire is not a condemned trafficker. He's an elder. He's a benefactor.

He's an angel in the actual word people used to talk about him back then in those areas. Yeah, there must be a shortage of angels in the tribal areas of this time. But I think he sounds slightly better than some of the guys running around that region at the time. So maybe he is an angel. I don't know. Yeah, a lot better. Meanwhile, in 2003, the U.S. indicts 11 traffickers from the Afridi clan in a separate case.

In 2006, a Maryland court sentences in a free father to life and a son to 30 years for something similar. Different ring, same tribe, same pass, different men, no established connection to our guy. But, you know, you teach a man to fish. You know, you know what happens, John. They keep fishing. Iberfridi dies on November 24, 2009 at home and Landy Kotel, a heart attack. likely in his early 70s he's buried in a village that's named after him

a life well lived you could say now there's one last piece of lore we need to get into because it follows the man around the internet like that story of Sean getting thrown out of Berguine follows him around and it's the story that Pablo Escobar once phoned him kingpin to kingpin there's no actual evidence or documentary basis for it anywhere in the record

and it's widely believed to be untrue by anyone with knowledge of either there's also a lot of talk I mean it's all over the certain comments now that he like was counterfeiting U.S. dollars, which is also like not, it's like the rush hour plot. It's also nonsense. Yeah. Like that is something, the U.S. does not mess around with that.

Like, A, if it happened before he was brought into the state, they would have charged him with it. And it's also quite difficult to do. It's like impossible. But he was supposed to have like, it's like rush hour. Everyone thinks it's really. He was supposed to have the one, the press that, you know, can finally make it. But it's not even.

There's zero evidence anywhere of that happening. It goes to the tribal areas of Pakistan. Pakistani, yeah, some Pakistani YouTuber that he was doing it. He did not, he was not counterfeiting US dollars. He was counterfeiting cigarettes. That's probably how it all got mixed in. But yes, that is our three-part series, but we are not done yet. We are currently digging further and further into the Stortnoon saga,

filing some foias, hitting up the courts, the feds, everything we can. I've been reaching out to some folks connected. So definitely expect another episode or update on that story. I have also not sold the movie rights yet because people are idiot, Sean. Where were we? Clearly, judging by your tone today. I mean, I would

like to add before we do a little sign off, the only club I've been chucked out of in like 20 years is the one I was in with you. So, I'd just like to put that to rest. Yeah. I mean, friends of the parking lot. Yeah, that was

great. Yeah, it was It was a lot of fun. What else? Yeah, if you're a pro bono lawyer, hit me, actually my man Rex probably is going to handle it, but even so, you got, if you got experience with clerical errors

in the, in New York State, let me know, this is the kind of announcement that the crime book I should end with. Little wrongful arrest situation. Patreon.com,

for some world podcast, if you want to keep the lights on and the archives open and my fee is paid in court, on a worldpod.com for the merch. Hope you guys enjoy this entire episode. Sorry, I kind of started losing my mind towards the end there. Somewhat delirious and working a lot.

And I got to deal with Sean every day, you know? Oh, thank you. I love that, man, guys. Love him. Thank you. I'm