Tivon Askari

"Have you forgotten? I know exactly how to get what I want."

Tivon Askari was a serial killer, abductor, and international criminal who appeared in Season Nine of Criminal Minds.

History
Askari was a member of the Iraqi special forces before working with the U.S. State Department, acting as an interrogation specialist and an interpreter for Operation: Classified, which tracked down Osama bin Laden, during which he worked alongside Jennifer Jareau, Mateo Cruz, then-FBI Section Chief Director Erin Strauss, and Michael Hastings. As a result, the former job required him to use torture in order to extract information from informants, and, being a closet sadist, he derived pleasure from the torture. Some of the people he tortured, including a couple named Savin and Nadia Mubari, were killed. Eventually, Askari was exposed as a traitor, and as a result, he fled with Hastings, also a traitor, during an ambush on a convoy carrying them on March 2011. Soon after, they began working for a regime, all the while seething in hatred at his former coworkers. Eventually, in 2014, he, Hastings, and several other members of the regime were assigned to retrieve codes relating to Operation: Integrity, which were intended to be sold to enemies of the U.S.; these codes were known only to JJ and Cruz, the only members of Integrity that were still alive.

After members of the regime squad abduct JJ and Cruz, Askari personally confronts the former and drugs her. He then proceeds to torture both in order to learn the codes, but proves to be unsuccessful. He even tries faking Cruz's death in order to get JJ to talk, but fails. Finally, JJ gives up her codes when Cruz, acting on Askari's orders, persuades her to do so. When Askari learns that Cruz knows his own codes, Hastings takes over the interrogation process and manages to get Cruz to reveal them by attempting to rape JJ. Upon starting the downloading of data onto Hastings's cellphone, Askari slashes the throat of one of their accomplices (presumably to remove loose ends), stabs Cruz in the stomach, and then prepares to stab JJ as well when the BAU burst in and open fire, shooting and killing him. JJ and Cruz are both then rescued. Hastings is later killed when he falls off a roof during a struggle with JJ, with the downloading being cancelled after his cellphone is destroyed during the fall.

Modus Operandi
Askari usually tortured his victims through a variety of ways in order to extract important information from them, and some were tortured so severely that they were killed. When he killed incidental victims, he either shot them with a handgun or slashed their throats with a knife.

Profile
The unsub who abducted JJ and Cruz is highly trained and organized.

Known Victims

 * Tortured and/or murdered numerous unnamed people prior to his exposure
 * Afghanistan:
 * October 2010: Savin Mubari
 * 2011:
 * February: Nadia Mubari
 * March: An unnamed soldier
 * 2014, Washington, D.C., U.S.:
 * January 23-24:
 * Jennifer Jareau
 * Mateo Cruz
 * January 24: An unnamed accomplice

Appearances

 * Season Nine
 * To Bear Witness
 * Strange Fruit
 * 200