- Years of drug gang violence have seen the Netherlands dubbed a ‘narco state’
The Netherlands is best known for tulips, windmills and bicycles – but the culmination of a six-year-long mega trial this week has brought its violent criminal underworld, and the brutal drug barons that occupy it, into sharp focus.
The Marengo Trial saw Europe’s most feared kingpin jailed for life following a campaign of terror dubbed ‘the bloody years’, with his criminal network linked to murders, a torture chamber and a severed head found in the streets of Amsterdam.
As the ‘undisputed leader’ of the Mocro Maffia – a bloodthirsty drug trafficking network with links to Morocco – Ridouan Taghi ‘decided who would be killed and spared no one,’ the judge said.
He amassed a fortune of $1 billion (£789 million) and became one of the world’s most wanted men, guarded by his network of criminal cronies who lived and worked by the motto: ‘If you talk, you die.’
The gang was true to its word, and omerta killings linked back to it abounded, with associates found dead in a series of gruesome executions which earned it the reputation of a ‘well-oiled killing machine’.
With journalists and lawyers murdered and even the prime minister and members of the royal family facing threats, the barbaric gang violence of recent years has given Holland the reputation of a ‘narco state’.
Taghi and 16 others stood trial for six murders, four attempted murders, and countless other attacks planned between 2015 and 2017.
But the influence of the Mocro Maffia was felt long before that, and, despite the ‘Marengo Circus’ putting Taghi and many others behind bars, it is expected to continue for some time to come.
Taghi went from something of a nobody to ‘Europe’s biggest drug lord’ in a matter of years, rising through the ranks as he smuggled record quantities of cocaine into the continent’s ports.
He became one of the world’s most wanted men, guarded by his network of criminal cronies who lived and worked by the motto: ‘If you talk, you die.’
The son of Moroccan immigrants, Taghi had moved to Vianen, Utrecht, as a small boy and was one of ten children.
He first got a taste for criminality as a teenager, dealing drugs and carrying out robberies as part of a youth gang known as the Bad Boys.
He was sentenced for burglaries and possessing weapons as a teenager in 1992, but in the subsequent years remained largely in the shadows.
By his early 20s, he moved into transportation, working as a fixer in his native Morocco and moving hash through a smuggling route to Spain and back to the Netherlands – where it had recently been decriminalised.
When South American cartels began to turn their attentions to Europe in the early 2000s, pushing cocaine through North Africa to the continent, he took advantage.
Dissatisfied with low-level dealing and something of an entrepreneur, Taghi worked quickly, forming connections with cartel bosses around the world.
He rose through the ranks and stood out for his business sense and brutality, and has since worked with the Italian mafia, Ireland’s notorious Kinahan clan, and Eastern European mobs.
As Dutch cocaine traffickers started raking in money, power struggles in the gangs began to take hold.
Bitter rivalries developed, with the ‘King of Amsterdam’ Gwenette Martha, dispatched in a 2014 turf war.
Months later, another boss called Samir Bouyakhhrichan – known as ‘scarface’ was shot dead in Spain.
The killing paved the way for Taghi to take control the top spot, and what began as a group of teenagers yearning for a glamourous gangster lifestyle began to grow into the Netherlands’ most notorious crime organisation.
Taghi, desperate to keep his identity under wraps at any cost, set about hiring his old Bad Boy comrades in a bid to shore up loyalty.
The lid was only lifted on his mysterious identity when an associate called ‘The Butcher’ came to police in 2015, fearing for his life.
The rival boss, whose real name was Ebrahim Buzhu, reported Taghi and his suspected right-hand man after his associates had trackers placed under their cars.
Investigating officers knew so little about Taghi they misspelt his first name, but the revelation enabled them to start putting the pieces together.
A month later, police uncovered a huge arsenal of deadly weapons at an address in Vianen, inlcuding an Uzi pistol, 36 automatic weapons and hand grenades.
Buzhu, who years later was set to testify against Taghi, was later found dead before he had the chance to.
The 52-year-old was found with a gunshot to the head in a burnt out car in Cadiz, Spain.
Another perceived traitor was liquidated after police cracked encrypted messages, allowing them to uncover a cache of weapons.
A GPS system and tracking devices had been bought from spyshop owner Ronald Bakker, who was suspected of co-operating with the police.
No more traitors or double-dealing,’ Taghi said, adding that he hoped whoever was responsible ‘would be gone tomorrow’.
While a plot to bazooka the shop was foiled, Bakker was later shot dead outside his home.
In another chilling threat, a severed head was placed outside a central Amsterdam hangout used by the gang’s rivals.
The body part was positioned as though it was looking into the shisha lounge – an apparent warning to enemy gangsters inside.
Perhaps the most disturbing episode of all was the discovery of a specially-built torture chamber dubbed the ‘treatment room’.
A phone which police claim had been in Taghi’s possession contained a series of chilling images from inside a shipping container, which had been fitted with a dentist’s chair and sound-proofing.
‘One of the photos shows a naked woman tied to a chair with tape. Another photo would show a belly with a cut finger and a toe,’ police said at the time.
‘In a third photo, a woman is lying naked on her stomach on the floor.’
The victim, authorities believe, was Naima Jilal, a Dutch-Moroccan woman who was involved in the cocaine trade.
From the photos’ metadata, police determined that the photos were taken on the night of 20 to 21 October 2019 – the same night Jilal went missing. Taghi’s lawyers denied the phone could be linked to their client.
Dutch police found the room, which held a dentist chair equipped with restraints, when they raided a warehouse in south of Rotterdam in 2020.
The killing which most shocked the Netherlands, and the world, was the cold-blooded murder of famous crime reporter Peter R de Vries.
The 64-year-old journalist was shot in the head outside a television studio in Amsterdam in July 2021, with prosecutors linking the killing to his role in the trial of a Dutch drugs mafia kingpin.
He died nine days later of his injuries. Prosecutors have sought life sentences for three of the suspects in his slaying, who are being tried separately to Marengo.
De Vries was first aware of the threat to him years before hos death, writing on Twitter in May 2019: ‘Justice and the police have informed me that I am on the death list of the fugitive Ridouan Taghi and that he has ordered my liquidation.’
While Taghi’s men reassured him that he posed no threat to the famous reporter, de Vries later acted as a ‘confidential counsel’ to Nabil Bakkali, the state’s star witness in his trial.
As well as de Vries, Bakkali’s brother and lawyer were also shot dead. The wave of murders gave the already grim trial ‘a pitch-black edge,’ the presiding judge told a packed courtroom.
While police suspect he was involved in many more killings, Taghi was successfully convicted on five murder counts.
Among the victims was a man called Hakim Changachi, who was gunned down in Utrecht in 2017 in what prosecutors say was a case of mistaken identity.
‘Taghi ordered the hit’ on another man who lived in the same block of flats as Changachi, the judge said.
‘Taghi was responsible for the mistake,’ the judge added.
A warrant for his Taghi’s arrest was issued in 2018 and he became known as the Netherlands’ most-wanted man when a £100,000 bounty was offered for information on his whereabouts – the largest ever offered by Dutch police.
Finally, following years of investigations and a worldwide manhunt, Taghi was found hiding in Dubai in December 2019, and he was arrested and extradited back to the Netherlands to face trial.
The Marengo Trial saga finally concluded this week after six years – with the drug overlord told he may never see the outside of prison again.
Judges handed life sentences to three of the defendants, including Taghi, once the Netherlands most-wanted fugitive, at a courthouse known as the ‘Bunker’.
‘We are sentencing all 17 suspects. Ridouan Taghi gets life in prison,’ a judge at Amsterdam District Court declared at the biggest criminal trial in the country’s history.
Despite many breathing a sigh of relief that Taghi is at last behind bars for good, experts are warning that jailing him will not be enough to quell his influence outside the prison walls – nor disrupt the flow of cocaine into Europe.
Dutch society has gained a reputation for its liberal stance on drugs, with cannabis attracting tourists and becoming a huge part of the country’s culture.
But now, there are fears that a crackdown is needed if there is hope of getting the situation under control.
Jan Struijs, the chairman of the Nederlandse PolitieBond police union, has described his country as a ‘narco-state 2.0’.
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Elena Salvoni
