Dutch drug kingpin Taghi sentenced to life in prison
AMSTERDAM: Dutch drug kingpin Ridouan Taghi received a life sentence yesterday for a series of murders his gang committed between 2015 and 2017, in one of the Netherlands’ largest trials.
“We are sentencing all the suspects. Ridouan Taghi gets life in prison,” said a judge at the Amsterdam District Court, who, for reasons of security, asked not to be identified.
Judges handed down their verdict against Moroccan-born Ridouan Taghi and others facing charges including murder over an alleged campaign of assassinations, which prosecutors called a “well-oiled killing machine”.
The verdict was read at 9am GMT at a highly secured courthouse situated on the outskirts of Amsterdam.
Taghi, 46, is the alleged mastermind of the Amsterdam-based group, seen as one of the Netherlands’s largest cocaine distributors.
He was arrested in Dubai in 2019, but despite being held at an ultra-secure prison, prosecutors say Taghi continued his reign of terror from inside the facility’s walls, handing secret messages to henchmen on the outside.
Commentators say the “Marengo” trial, named after a judicial codeword for the operation that saw Taghi charged with 16 others, is unprecedented for the Netherlands.
Security around t he trial was extremely tight, and the Dutch army was called in to guard the courthouse.
Taghi and his co-accused were tried for six murders and attempted murders — including ordering some 13 hits — carried out between 2015 and 2017 mainly against people suspected of turning police informants.
In one case, a man called Hakim Changachi was gunned down in Utrecht in 2017 in what prosecutors say was a mistaken-identity murder.
Shortly afterwards, police made a breakthrough in the case when one of the suspected gang members called “Nabil B” handed himself over and agreed to become the prosecution’s crown witness.
A new wave of violence followed after Nabil B turned state witness, leaving three people dead in scenes that shocked the nation.
Nabil B’s brother was murdered in 2018, his lawyer Derk Wiersum was shot dead outside his house in 2019, and the prominent Dutch crime journalist Peter R de Vries was killed in 2021.
Taghi said money spent on a “sham trial could rather have gone to employing more teachers and police and health care”, Het Parool reported.