Tensions for trial over Aquino liquidation
The suspect responsible who is detained for the controversial liquidation (in 2015) of drug criminal Silvio Aquino (41) still hopes to avoid a trial, a decision will be made next month. Martino Trotta has now been in pre-trial detention for almost five years. Trotta was an enemy of the Aquino family, of Italian background. Both Trotta and the Aquinos come from Maasmechelen (B).
The indictment chamber (KI) in Tongeren will decide on December 1 whether Trotta and four co-defendants should appear before the assize court in 2021. In HLN , his lawyer Tim Smet says: 'My client denies being the initiator of the murder of Silvio Aquino. We await the verdict of the AI. My client hopes to be released before the assize process takes place. ' On Tuesday there was a session of the AI ​​on the referral of five suspects to the assize court, where a public jury must pass judgment. The investigation into the murder of Silvio Aquino was brought to the council chamber almost five years after date, which sent the file to the AI, with a view to referral to the assize court.
Silvio Aquino, was one of the brothers of the Aquino clan who stood trial in the court in Hasselt and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for cocaine smuggling. Silvio Aquino was murdered in 2015 before the court ruled. In 2006 he was convicted in a coke case in Amsterdam.
Silvio Aquino and his wife Silvia Liskova were trapped on August 27, 2015 in Opglabbeek (B), Aquino lost his life in a shootout but Liskova managed to get to safety. One of the attackers was fatally hit and his companions took him with them but eventually left him along the A73 in the Dutch town of Roermond. The dead was the son (22) of Sandro Hamidovic, one of the suspects. He had Italian nationality. A few weeks before the murder, the group allegedly tried to kidnap Aquino.
The executors were eventually arrested in France and Germany: four Bosniaks from the infamous Hamidovic family. Martino Trotta was arrested in January 2016 . The former restaurant keeper is said to have ordered the murder. During that detention, he was also sentenced to 6 years in prison for the smuggling of half a ton of cocaine in 2012 from Paraguay. He also became infected with the corona virus.
Only Trotta and Sandro Hamidovic are now in jail. The suspects have denied involvement. At the time of the attack, Trotta was in Antwerp.
The Aquinos probably have links with members of the Italian 'Ndrangheta. Once upon a time, the Aquinos regularly visited Trotta's restaurant, Da Zeca on the Oude Baan in Eisden, until problems arose.
