Abdul Latif Sharif

Who was Abdul Latif Sharif?

Abdul Latif Sharif, was an Egyptian chemist and chief suspect in the Juárez killings, a decade-long murder spree that began in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez in the early 1990s.

Sharif immigrated to the United States in 1970 to work as a high-paid research chemist for a series of U.S. companies, some of which are alleged to have shielded him from persistent accusations of rape and murder. Jailed for 12 years for rape in 1984, Sharif was released early for good behaviour in 1989, committed another rape, and fled to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, to escape a deportation hearing in El Paso, Texas. After the bodies of young women began to turn up in the desert surrounding Juárez, Sharif was arrested and imprisoned, serving a 60 year sentence for murder in a maximum-security jail in the state capital of Chihuahua, Chihuahua, where he eventually died of natural causes in a local hospital.

The murders have continued since Sharif's imprisonment & death. To this day, Mexican journalists such as Sergio González Rodriguez maintain that Sharif was framed by the Mexican authorities.