crime
Verdicts against Dutch “Mocro Mafia” expected
Masked and armed Dutch police officers guard a transport carrying some of the suspects as they arrive in front of the high-security court building in Amsterdam. photo
© Peter Dejong/AP/dpa
It is the largest murder trial in the Netherlands to date: 17 men from a notorious drug gang are charged. An ex-accomplice weighs heavily on her. With fatal consequences for crime reporter de Vries too.
Accompanied by the strictest security precautions, today will be the largest Murder trial in Dutch history temporarily ends. The judges in the high-security court in Amsterdam made their verdict against 17 members of a notorious drug gang, including the alleged boss Ridouan Taghi (46). Six of them face life imprisonment, for the rest the prosecution had demanded up to 27 years in prison.
A former accomplice had testified against the gang. But that had fatal consequences. The brother of this key witness Nabil B. was murdered, as was his lawyer and finally, in 2021, the prominent crime reporter Peter R. de Vries. The murder on the street in Amsterdam also caused international outrage.
This trial was not about these murders. The verdict for the murder of reporter de Vries is not expected to come until June. But many believe the three murders showed how big narco-terrorism is in the Netherlands.
The process lasted almost six years
The mammoth process took almost six years. The 17 men are charged with six contract killings, four attempted murders and membership in a criminal organization. The defendants remained mostly silent during the trial.
The gang belonged to the so-called Mocro Mafia and was a leader in the international cocaine trade for years. In the course of a bloody gang war, the country was shocked by reckonings and assassination attempts. In 2017, Nabil B. unpacked in exchange for a reduced sentence.
The prosecution relies primarily on his statement and a large number of chat reports from the gang. She had communicated using encrypted messages, but in the end investigators managed to crack the code. This news illustrated the relentless terror.