"Some of the people Tony is in business with are hunting him in the Middle East," the source said this week. "There is one man, who they call El Cactus, who runs the cartel.

"He is a very dangerous man. They call him cactus because you don't want to get too close to him."

The Mexican gang is said to be linked to Columbian drug lords.

The source says he wants the claims made public so more people can join the search. Mokbel vanished in March during his trial for cocaine trafficking. He was sentenced in absentia to at least nine years' jail.

He is listed on Interpol's wanted database and a police taskforce has been formed to find him.

He was accused of orchestrating a cocaine smuggling bid that police thwarted in 2000. It emerged during the trial that one of the middlemen Mokbel had used was connected to the Mexican drug cartel Arellano Felix.

The ultra-violent, US-trained paramilitary commandos known as the "Zetas" have been held responsible for hundreds of murders along the US-Mexico border this year.

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