After he was arrested in Dubai and sent back to the Netherlands, Ridouan Taghi was locked up in a maximum security isolation cell in the country’s toughest jail.
Soon, though, the man labelled the drug kingpin of Europe was again making waves. Within a year, his cousin and lawyer were arrested for allegedly trying to break him out, and prison officers were asking to wear masks any time they were near him lest he identify them for later retribution.
They had good reason to be fearful. The authorities boasted that they had ended the reign of the man running Europe’s drug market, yet he appeared to be acting from inside with impunity, ordering the elimination of people connected to a key witness against him.
Now, however, the authorities believe they have finally brought an end to the saga: Taghi, 46, and two other men were handed life sentences on Tuesday, with a further 14 men receiving lengthy prison terms. Taghi was convicted of five murders.
Masked police surrounded a courthouse in Amsterdam known as “The Bunker” and a police helicopter hovered overhead as the unnamed judges, their faces hidden from view, read out the sentences. Security officers, officials and even drivers had had to cover their faces as their cars arrived at the building.
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“We are talking about ruthless, disruptive violence in which human life is worthless,” said the judge delivering the verdict.
“[Taghi] decided who would be killed and spared no one. The amount of suffering he caused is hard to imagine.”
A US Drug Enforcement Agency document leaked in 2019 identified Taghi as one of the kingpins of a “super-cartel” alongside Irish, Italian and Bosnian mafia bosses thought to control a third of the cocaine trade in Europe.
Taghi was arrested in Dubai in December 2019 and, after being transferred to the Netherlands, became the lead defendant in the “Marengo” trial — the judicial codeword for the case.
The trial itself prompted further murders, including the killing of three people working with the Dutch crown prosecution’s key witness, known as Nabil B. A gang member turned informant, both his lawyer and his brother were assassinated during the course of the trial in a perceived attempt to silence him.
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The case drew further international attention when Peter R de Vries, a Dutch investigative journalist who was coaching Nabil B through the trial, was shot in the head in a brazen daytime hit on an Amsterdam street in 2021.
“This really was the most intense and biggest criminal trial we ever had here in the Netherlands,” Onno de Jong, a lawyer representing Nabil B and a friend of De Vries, told The Times. “My client has gone through hell. But once you’ve started this, there’s no way back.”
Lawyers like De Jong, judges, witnesses and prosecutors involved in the trial are now all under permanent police protection.
Only seven of the suspects were present in the court to hear the verdict, with others watching from their detention centres. Taghi did not attend.
“It’s been almost impossible to defend my client,” a defence lawyer told The Times on the condition of anonymity. “With all the media pressure and the attention from the public, there was no way the judges were going to give anything but life sentences to the big names.”
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That allegation was rejected by the chairing judge delivering the verdict, who said the decisions were made on the basis of the file, “not on the basis of what was said in the media”.
The process has left an indelible mark on the Dutch justice system, according to those who have followed the case. In neighbouring Belgium, police foiled a suspected plot by a drugs gang to kidnap the country’s justice minister, Vincent van Quickenborne, after officers had turned their attention to Antwerp, the port through which most cocaine enters Europe, often via Dutch crime networks. One suspect linked to the plot was Taghi.
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“It has brought fear into this system,” Sven Brinkhoff, a professor of criminal law at the University of Amsterdam, said — and he fears that the verdict will not be enough to curb the unwanted reputation of the Netherlands as a “narco state”.
“One thing we know for sure is that the underlying cocaine trafficking will continue, and that’s an uncomfortable truth,” he added.
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The fact that all of the men in the trial are of Moroccan origin has played into the anti-immigration sentiment that has gripped the Netherlands in recent years, and which resulted in Geert Wilders’s hard-right Party for Freedom winning the most seats in the general election in November.
A defence lawyer for one of the 17 men convicted indicated that he would be submitting an appeal within two weeks if permitted to do so.
