'Rotterdam South shooting was liquidation, victim Pito Rasta was met'
June 3, 2024
The 32-year-old man from The Hague, who died on Sunday after being shot on Friday night in front of a café in South Rotterdam, was met by the gunman on the spot. Several people witnessed the shooting, which was captured on camera footage.
De Telegraaf writes that the victim is an Antillean from The Hague with the nickname Pito Rasta. According to the newspaper's sources, he has many enemies in the criminal environment and is known as a ripper of cocaine shipments. The victim was known to the police and the judiciary.
https://www.crimesite.nl/schietpart...e-slachtoffer-pito-rasta-werd-opgewacht/How Antillean gangs operate in the Netherlands
Gerlof Leistra
GERLOF LEISTRA
September 21, 2015 Reading time: 8 minutes
Gang conflict that has spread from Curaçao is no less than the infamous 'Mocro war', with a wave of shootings. Antillean criminals are exceptionally mobile and therefore very difficult for the police to combat.
Antillean criminals are easily burned, as every police officer with street experience knows, and they shoot away at the slightest provocation. This regularly results in casualties and injuries to innocent civilians. They seem like incidents, but many of those shootings are related to a bloody war between two Antillean street gangs, No Limit Soldiers (NLS) and Buena Vista City (BVC).
The origins of both gangs lie in impoverished working-class neighborhoods in Willemstad, Curaçao. NLS comes from Koraal Specht, BVC from Buena Vista. Their size is not exactly known, but there and here there are at least several hundred criminals. The gang war erupted a few years ago after an argument over a stolen shipment of coke and spread to the Netherlands.
Gang members constantly travel back and forth to control drug and weapons smuggling, especially from Curaçao, to go into hiding when things get too hot under their feet and to carry out assassination orders. 28 people have already been killed in the battle, most of them in Curaçao.
WILD WEST SCENES
Gang members also create Wild West scenes in the Netherlands. On Wednesday evening, January 30, 2013, 34-year-old Mervin A. (nicknamed Machiavelli) from BVC sees his rivals Reyno C. (25, alias Bomba) and Gilbert H. (21) from NLS in front of the entrance to the busy Slinge metro station in South Rotterdam. .
In revenge because his brother was allegedly shot dead by NLS in the Caribbean, he draws his automatic firearm and shoots Gilbert. Reyno – who had fled to the Netherlands because he was threatened in Curaçao – immediately draws his revolver and fires back. It is purely a coincidence that no travelers are affected. A woman feels a bullet whizzing past her ear.
Whether they meet each other on the street, at an Antillean party or in the café - the gang members immediately start shooting. "They rip the opponent and fight each other out," says a detective chief. "Do you want to die?"
Saturday, July 11, 2015, was a hit in the city center of The Hague. At 4.30 am, 31-year-old Jursley Cijntje alias Pretu ('black') was shot in front of the busy dance café La Suegra. He died in hospital.
A 34-year-old friend was seriously injured. Witnesses had seen two men posting nearby. Five days later, a 40-year-old woman was arrested in Capelle aan den IJssel, but her role in the shooting is unclear. According to the police, the shooter is 34-year-old Robertico 'Tico' Inesia, but he has disappeared.
Cijntje belonged to NLS and had moved back from Curaçao to the Netherlands three months before his death to live with the mother of his child. He was active in the criminal (drug) circuit.
Five years ago, Cijntje himself was a suspect in a murder in Zoetermeer. On September 5, 2010, 22-year-old Antillean Quincy Johanna was shot dead in front of a party center during an argument. There was no evidence against Cijntje, but his friend Gino L. alias Cora ('red') got nine years. He is reportedly a prominent member of NLS.
FLYING BULLETS
Just like the controversial liquidations of Moroccans, these shootings often take place in public spaces. Criminal Antilleans themselves say: 'The street is hot.' Bystanders are at risk of being hit by flying bullets.
Last February, on a Wednesday morning in Almere, a 39-year-old Antillean with a loaded gun took a seat on city bus line 1. When a man he knew from prison on Curaçao got on board, he started shooting at random. A 34-year-old mother of four was hit in the back and will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. The target survived the shooting.
'Rotto' or 'Roffa' – Rotterdam – is popular with gang members. They are less noticeable in the large Antillean community. Nevertheless, the police are on top of it, says deputy police chief Martine Vis (46) of the Rotterdam unit. She is portfolio holder for the Caribbean and, as a former district chief of Rotterdam South, knows the target group well. 'It is an environment that we monitor very closely. Criminal Antilleans have firearms and the threshold for using them is low. They're impulsive boys.'
Since 2008, the Rotterdam police has had a separate team for Antillean robbers, the Pagang team. Two years ago, the Criminal Investigation Team in Curaçao – a joint team of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and the Netherlands – warned that members of NLS, BVC and the smaller Army gang were coming to the Netherlands.
To get a good picture of these street gangs, the Infocel Cariben was founded in Rotterdam. All eleven units of the National Police and the Royal Military Police now have 'task focus holders' and share information. A national analysis yielded a 'subject list' of more than fifty people, a fraction of the total.
The gang members are anything but stable. They roam from one address to another, and have many family and friends in different cities. This makes them easy to stay under the radar.
The Netherlands has almost 150,000 Antilleans. Most live in Rotterdam (about a third), Dordrecht, Den Helder, Eindhoven, The Hague, Amsterdam and Groningen. There are a total of 22 'Antilles municipalities'. Young people in particular remain stuck in the underclass and are often unemployed.
STREET TRADING
Antilleans play an important role in street trafficking and are also guilty of, among other things, robbery and rip deals, in which they rob each other of drugs and/or money. They are overrepresented in murder and manslaughter, as Elsevier 's ongoing murder research shows .
There is an average of five murders every year. This year the count stands at three. Most murders are drug-related and linked to gang conflict. Feuds often play a role and revenge is the motive. On Saturday, August 3, 2013, 40-year-old Vernon Poulina was shot dead at his home in Spijkenisse in front of his girlfriend and grandchild.
Poulina had only just been released after a shooting in 2007 in café El Hombre in Spijkenisse. Two young Antilleans had assaulted him because of the theft of a gold chain. Looking for revenge, Poulina entered El Hombre armed a little later and opened fire on one of them, 24-year-old Nadyen Antonio Ilina alias Rasta. The shooting left six people injured, including a 32-year-old woman who had nothing to do with the argument. She got a bullet right next to her heart. Six years later, Ilina took revenge and shot Poulina dead.
Other criminals often stop when they have a family. Antilleans do not; they have children with different women and remain active in the environment. The average gangsta is a macho who hangs around on the street a lot. A gold chain around the neck, gold teeth and tattoos.
Members of NLS, for example, are recognizable by the letters NLS or TRU on their chest and wear their gang's emblem on their chain: a tank. The more powerful you are, the more gems in the emblem. They make no secret of their lifestyle. Members proudly pose with wads of money, drugs and fully automatic weapons on Facebook and YouTube, among others.
PREPARATION
Gang members constantly change mobile numbers. Because they address each other with nicknames and often communicate via ping messages - a closed system that uses special numbers - it is difficult for investigators to get a handle on them.
'They are an impulsive people,' says Martine Vis. 'You also see this in criminal collaborations. They are often fleeting. The same applies to crimes. They think that they are going to commit a robbery in an hour, but are just as easily distracted by a beautiful girl. The preparation is often minimal.'
Antillean criminals are violent, but according to Vis lack the organizational talent for large-scale drug trafficking. 'They do not attract large parties via the port of Rotterdam. They are street boys for whom 100 kilos is already too much. They throw around a few kilos and do the dirty work for the big players in the background.'
For example, members of NLS were deployed for the murder of politician Helmin Wiels on May 5, 2013 in Curaçao. One of the suspects, Luigi 'Pretu' Florentina (27), was later arrested in Zoetermeer and extradited. He committed suicide in the police cell.
ALSO FROM ELSEVIER:
CARLA JOOSTEN: 'MAYORS ARE THE VANGUARD IN THE FIGHT AGAINST THE UNDERWORLD'
COCAINE
The gangs send small shipments of cocaine to the Netherlands on KLM flights. On February 25, 2012, the discovery of a sports bag containing 6 kilos of coke in an airplane wing at Schiphol led to the arrest of eighteen suspects. Corrupt airport staff should have removed the bag from the plane, but the party was tipped off.
Tapped conversations and interrogations then provided an insight into the NLS network. Alleged leader Shurendy Q. (28) wanted revenge for the failed transport and is said to have ordered the liquidation of a certain Quincy in the Netherlands.
Police warned the target. Because it could not be proven with certainty that Q. had participated in thousands of ping conversations under various nicknames, he was acquitted. His right-hand man Franklin A. (40) received a 12-year prison sentence.
The gang members are brimming with black money, the file shows. At one point they even toy with the idea of ??setting up a Western Union agency to make it easier to send large sums of money back and forth.
They shield their real power from the outside world as much as possible. Indirectly, gang members have interests in, among other things, the catering industry. This involves sham management via paper owners.
Because the suspects are so mobile, use nicknames and veiled language, and are not likely to confess, investigations are difficult. Witnesses are threatened and sometimes removed. Girlfriends of the gang members provide helpful services and keep their mouths shut for money. Motto: 'Live with your mouth shut!'
With good contacts in the Antillean community, the criminal duty of silence can be circumvented fairly easily, says Martine Vis. 'Antilleans chat easily if you join them for a cup of tea. When I meet boys in South Rotterdam, I hear a lot. We have local police officers who deal exclusively with the Antillean target group. After a crime, they often quickly know where to look.'
In the meantime, the gang members continue to come and go. The drug market is simply too lucrative. The latest trend is that they smuggle marijuana to the Antilles and exchange it one for one for coke. Checkout!
https://www.ewmagazine.nl/nederland...ndes-in-nederland-te-werk-gaan-2689513W/