Life for crime lord Ridouan Taghi in largest Dutch gang trial

Judges at the Amsterdam district court on Tuesday handed down three life sentences and over a dozen more convictions in the long-awaited verdict in one of the largest criminal trials in Dutch history.

Ridouan Taghi, Saïd Razzouki and Mario R. were all given life terms for their role in a string of gangland killings over several years. The other 14 defendants were given jail terms of between 29 and just under two years, in some cases well below the public prosecution department demands. Crown witness Nabil Bakkali was jailed for 10 years.

The verdicts at the Bunker, the capital’s high security courtroom, bring to an end a complicated, six-year judicial process.

Taghi – once the Netherlands most wanted men – stood accused of running one of the largest drug trafficking operations in Europe. Together with 16 other defendants, the 46-year-old was charged with six “liquidations” as gangland killings are known in Dutch, plus four attempted murders, planning other attacks and being a member of a criminal organisation.

Despite the defendants spending most of the trial in detention, violence around the gang continued.

In September 2018, Derk Wiersum, the lawyer for the crown witness Bakkali, was gunned down outside his home. In 2021, famed Dutch criminal journalist Peter R. de Vries was gunned down in Amsterdam. He had been assisting Bakkali during the trial and authorities believe Taghi ordered the killing.

“That gives the process a pitch-black edge today,” the presiding judge said at the outset of the hearing, which got to a late start due to a delay with the prisoner transport. The court asked the media to refrain from including the names of the judges for safety reasons.

Taghi was not in court to hear the verdict but eight of his co-defendants were present at the former warehouse located on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Amsterdam.

100,000 pages

The Marengo trial officially began in March 2021 and the dossier is the largest in Dutch history, running to 100,000 pages.

In February 2023, Taghi’s lead counsel, Inez Weski, finished her final arguments. She told the judges her client had not received a fair trial and said he looks like “a captive deer” after years of restrictions in jail.

Three months later, Weski – a prominent Dutch criminal lawyer – was herself arrested for helping Taghi. Court watchers in the country were shocked and many people wonder if she herself has been threatened. Citing attorney-client privilege, she has refused to speak to investigators.

Initially unable to find anyone to represent him, Taghi informed the judges via a handwritten note that he intended to represent himself. Taghi ultimate retained a new defense team which requested a nine-month extension to familiarise themselves with the case file but were refused. Then, in December last year, Taghi’s new counsel resigned, saying they were unable to mount a proper defence for their client.

Pleadings for the other defendants finished in July 2023.

Life in jail

While three of the men have been sentenced to life, the Netherlands – like all parties to the European Convention of Human Rights – does not sentence to convicts to life without the possibility of parole.

At the moment life prisoners become eligible for parole after 25 years, when they can take their case to a special panel that assesses their behaviour and development in prison, the risk of reoffending and the impact their release could have on victims and their relatives. The final say currently rests with the minister for legal protection, although there are moves under way to change this.

There are currently 57 prisoners serving life sentences in Dutch prisons, including Willem Holleeder who was sentenced to life in 2019 for ordering five gangland murders.