THE HAGUE: European police forces have tracked down and arrested 14 people on a “most wanted” list in the six months since its launch, many thanks to public tip-offs, officials said on Friday.

“In at least eight of these arrests, the leads provided via the online platform played a direct role in locating the fugitives,” the European police agency, Europol, said in a statement.

Police forces from across the European Union came together to launch www.eumostwanted.eu after criticism over a lack of coordination in the wake of November’s attacks in Paris, which left 130 people dead.

Those now behind bars include Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the attacks, and Ibrahim Abrini, the brother of Mohamed Abrini, a Moroccan-Belgian implicated in both the Paris assault and the March Brussels bombings.

Their arrests were not directly linked to the website, which has received millions of views since it was launched on January 29.

But in February Romanian “yoga teacher and spiritual mentor” Gregorian Bivolaru, 64, was captured in a Paris book store after years on the run thanks to a tip-off.

A French court has ordered him to be extradited to Romania to face charges of exploiting children and child pornography between 2002 and 2004.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2016