Journalist under threat led to A2 shutdown, tightened security A suspicious and threatening situation on the A2 near Amsterdam led to the highway's one-hour closure about 25 kilometers further south from 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. Dutch crime journalist John van den Heuvel, who has been under police protection for some time, was driving on the expressway when others appeared to chase him, an anonymous police source told newspaper AD
The suspect who was arrested on Thursday afternoon during a police action on the A2 due to a suspicious situation surrounding crime journalist John van den Heuvel is 36-year-old Mourad O. from Utrecht. That writes Het Parool. According to the Public Prosecution Service, he is suspected of preparing a serious crime. Nothing further has been said about the nature of that suspicion and that crime.
Mourad O. has a criminal record, but not for serious cases. He was called in the spring of 2021 as a witness in the Marengo trial against Ridouan Taghi and co-defendants. Het Parool reports that Mourad O. was previously convicted because of a possible rip deal from a cannabis nursery. In the past, he was in a car that was linked to a serious crime.
In the spring of 2021, O. was interrogated as a witness in the Marengo trial. He was summoned because suspect Mohamed el A. (of, among other things, the liquidation of Ranko Scekic in 2016) had made an extensive statement that he hoped Mourad O. would (partly) confirm. However, he invoked his 'non-disclosure' and remained silent.
Mourad O. knows several players in the periphery around Ridouan Taghi, but it is still unclear whether he played a prominent role in the criminal environment.
Fugitive 'tattookiller' Cor P. arrested in Dominican Republic after attempt on his life
The infamous 'tattookiller' Cor P. (38) was arrested in a hospital in the Dominican Republic on Thursday. Two days earlier, the Schiedammer had been seriously injured in an attempt to liquidate him. He had fled the Netherlands in January 2020 after being sentenced to life imprisonment for an underworld murder.
Two men on a scooter shot at Cor P. last Tuesday in his white all-terrain vehicle in the center of the Dominican tourist resort of Las Terrenas, where he has probably lived for some time. He tried to escape, but collided with another all-terrain vehicle during a short chase, after which his car ended up on the side. He climbed out of the car and ran into an alley, where the gunmen left him badly injured. According to local police, he was hit by three bullets.
A gun, several magazines, plenty of bullets and a wig were found in two safes in his apartment, as well as two false license plates, four forged passports and five counterfeit Costa Rican ID cards.
Police initially believed the victim was from Costa Rica, as one of P.'s fake IDs stated. When it turned out that it was Cor P., who had been spotted internationally, he was arrested in hospital on Thursday.
Cor P. was sentenced in 2014 to 12.5 years in prison with three co-defendants. He received that sentence for the attempt to liquidate the Amsterdam criminal Marlon D. with dozens of bullets in the Andries Vierlinghstraat in Amsterdam-Slotervaart, in August 2009. Justice sees him as one of the leaders of the so-called 'tattookillers', referring to the Chinese characters they have tattooed on their backs. P. is linked to more murders. His nickname is 'The Eel'. This is because he usually managed to escape punishment.
According to the detectives, Ridouan Taghi has been organizing an outbreak from March 2021. According to the NRC , this is apparent from documents from the criminal file against lawyer Youssef Taghi, which a reporter from the newspaper has seen. Youssef Taghi was arrested on October 8 last year. As a lawyer, he regularly visited his cousin in the Extra Secure Institution (EBI) in Vught.
According to the police, there were plans for three violent liberation actions – codenamed Bios – at the EBI or at an extra-secure courtroom in Amsterdam-Osdorp where the Marengo case against Taghi is being heard. A third plan—codenamed Mega Mindy—was to take four EBI employees hostage. Taghi would then have to be released in exchange for their release. 'It has to be done in the Navy Seals way', Taghi would have informed Youssef, among other things.
69 photos of chats with various contacts from Ridouan Taghi's criminal organization were found on Youssef's iPad, the police said. It is not clear who exactly those contacts are.
The police arrested a 16-year-old Amsterdammer on Tuesday on suspicion of involvement in the shooting of Itzhak Meiri (56) in Amstelveen on December 22. He is the third suspect in the case. A day after the shooting incident, the police already arrested two suspected Amsterdammers, aged 21 and 22.
How a Rotterdam criminal became an international drug lord Yesterday 16:05 4 minutes Born and raised Rotterdam resident Piet 'Costa' has long remained under the radar of the police and the judiciary. Last week he was sentenced to 17 years in prison. NRC reporter Jan Meeus examines in his new podcast how this previously unknown figure could become an international drug smuggler of stature within ten years. He tells about it at Speech Makers.
"He has been invisible for a long time," says crime reporter Meeus, who is doing research at home and abroad for the second season of the podcast series Cocaine Fever . "In 2018, his name was mentioned in the Telegraaf for the first time." According to Meeus, the rise of Costa is interesting because it keeps pace with the period in which the Netherlands became the hub in the cocaine trade worldwide.
The fifty-year-old Costa owes his name to the three years he spent in Costa Rica. He is suspected of extensive cocaine trade (including via pineapple plantations) and he is considered to be the client of the torture chambers that were found in Wouwse Plantage.
Colombian vacuum Previously, the Italian mafia clan 'Ndrangheta was mainly involved in drug smuggling from Latin America to Europe, says Meeus. When the peace process cut off contacts with the FARC and the Americans stopped burning cocaine plantations in Colombia, there was a power vacuum and an abundance of coke.
Dutch drug criminals such as Piet Costa have "surfed along on this wave", says Meeus, who explains this process in the podcast with the help of a journalist from the American research platform Insight Crime.
'Candy' According to Meeus, Piet Costa has been able to remain under the radar for a long time because he has not yet been associated with liquidations. "Pete was called a candy. If he was stolen, it didn't matter much to him." Until someone stole 100 million euros, Meeus says. "There the conflict has been eradicated, for which, according to the police and the judiciary, he built that torture container."
In Antwerp, the Public Prosecution Service has demanded seven years in prison against Maruf "Paja" M. (65) for his part in a heroin smuggling through the port of Antwerp. In the case, a group of port workers was demanded up to 12 years in prison for extracting mainly cocaine, including on the quay of International Car Operators (ICO) in the port of Antwerp, according to the Gazet van Antwerpen . The research is part of the research into the group around 'Godfather' Martien R. from Oss.
Paja is originally a Bosnian Dutchman who runs a restaurant in The Hague. He belonged to the inner circle of, among others, the (murdered) Amsterdam criminals Sam Klepper and John Mieremet, and also Willem Holleeder.
'Commando in mocro-mafia': elite soldier (42) suspected of drug and arms trafficking AMSTERDAM - An investigation into the criminal organization that according to justice is led by Ridouan Taghi has led to the arrest of one of the most renowned members of the Korps Commando Troops (KCT). The arrest is hard for the defense and police. There it is feared that the 42-year-old sergeant major from Rotterdam shared his extensive knowledge of special operations, weapons and tactics with criminals. Lawyers Michael Ruperti, Frezia Aarts and the Public Prosecution Service in Arnhem confirm the arrest of the non-commissioned officer. “On February 1, a Special Forces soldier was arrested. The man is suspected of preparing to import narcotics, embezzlement of military goods, involvement in the arms trade and illegal possession of weapons," said the judiciary. The Ministry of Defense is not responding pending the investigation. The commando arrested last week may have given weapons training to criminals abroad.
On Saturday evening, the police found 350 kilos of cocaine in a van that drove away from a shisha lounge on Dijklaan in Breda. Nineteen handguns were subsequently found during a raid on the catering facility. Two suspects, ages 38 and 44, have been arrested. Surveillance officers saw a van with two men pull away from the shisha lounge at 7:45 PM. The driver was given a stop sign but did not respond. The pursuit was then started through the center of Breda. Eventually the passage of the van was blocked, the driver tried to flee but surrendered quickly, according to police. While this 38-year-old man from Teteringen and his 44-year-old passenger without permanent residence or residence were taken to the police station, the van was examined. It turned out to contain 350 kilos of cocaine. An arrest team then raided the shisha lounge. Nineteen small arms were found inside. The investigation into the origin of the drugs and weapons is ongoing.
The police arrested nine suspects on Tuesday in a large-scale investigation into cocaine imports via the port of Rotterdam. The nine men are suspected of, among other things, importing cocaine, money laundering, non-official corruption and illegal possession of firearms. During the action day, thirteen homes and business premises in Rotterdam, Schiedam, Hoogvliet, Papendrecht and The Hague were searched.
The investigation by the Regional Investigation Service started in March 2021, after several reports were received by the police about the import of cocaine via the port of Rotterdam.Some of the information from the investigation came from cracked PGP messages, which, according to the police, were supplemented and reinforced with classic investigative work.
Which factions, or nationalities if it’s easier, would you rank at the top of Holland’s OC?
At top are still the so called "Dutch Networks" also known as Penoze.
Historical coincidence has it that the countries from which large numbers of people came to the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s developed into leading producers and transit traders of the main drug types for the European market in the 1980s and 1990s. By far the most heroin comes from Turkey, the Surinamese and Dutch Antilles as well as the Aruban connection connect Colombia with its cocaine trade to Europe, Morocco has developed into the most important producer of hash. In all these countries, large criminal drug groups have recently developed or the pre-existing underworld has shifted its focus to drug trafficking. They are as connected to the political and economic centers of power of their country as the transnational groups in Italy or Colombia.
All foreign or transnational crime groups that have been identified in the Netherlands are involved in the drug trade, but their function differs according to the position they occupy within the range of activities between production and consumption. These groups can be divided into three categories. There are groups whose headquarters are in the drug producing countries (Colombia and other South American countries). Then there are groups that have their headquarters in the countries where drugs are bought and consumed (Italy). Finally, there are groups led from countries where drugs are neither produced nor consumed, and which focus only on smuggling (China, Ghana, Nigeria). There are also transnational groups that also deal in drugs, but for whom this is not a main activity in the Netherlands (the Russian 'mafia' and the gangs of former Yugoslavs).
Which factions, or nationalities if it’s easier, would you rank at the top of Holland’s OC?
Like Hollander stated above, the Dutch organized crime networks ("penoze") are the traditional kind of organized crime in the Netherlands and are the most established. This mostly concerns high level Dutch criminals from working class towns surrounding big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam (a lot of them live in Schiedam these days),...trailer parks/camp sites ("woonwagenkampen") in especially North Brabant but also in South Limburg, South Holland (mostly around The Hague) and Drenthe. When it comes to the North Brabant networks plenty of high level criminals are not exclusively from the camp sites and also come from working class towns like St. Willebrord or from border towns in the Flemish Campines region.
The activities of the traditional Dutch networks depends on the region. Networks from North Brabant and South Limburg focus a lot on the production of and international trade in synthetic drugs. They're involved in importing cocaine and hashish (especially from Lebanon and Pakistan) as well, but the trade in synthetic drugs is their main bread and butter. Their turnover is enormous. Networks from Rotterdam/Schiedam, The Hague region and Drenthe are mostly involved in the international cocaine and hashish trade. The traditional Amsterdam area networks these days are mostly involved in the hashish trade and in extortative real estate deals; they mostly infiltrative the activities of shady realtors, contractors and bankers and squeeze them out.
Moroccans are the biggest minority group in the Netherlands and when it comes to the cocaine trade they have taken up a very important position. A lot of the retail trade in cocaine in big cities like Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam, but also in smaller cities in South Limburg is monopolized by Moroccan criminal families. Whereas the trade in Lebanese and Pakistani hashish is largely the business of traditional Dutch networks, the importation and trade in Moroccan hashish is a mostly Moroccan affair. Most Dutch Moroccans have family members in the Rif in North Morocco and criminals use their family connections to set up these trafficking networks. Their large scale involvement in the cocaine trade has made them a huge target for law enforcement and the police is coming down on the quite hard.
Gangs with origins in Suriname and Curaçao are also involved in the smuggling of cocaine. At the moment they're not as big time as the Moroccan groups (who import tons), but in their respective areas these gangs have the retail drug game on lock and they're highly territorial. It's not uncommon for them to fly in killers from the rainforest region in Suriname or from Curaçao. Sometimes Surinamese and Curaçaoan criminals also work in cahoots with Moroccan or Dutch criminals in the cocaine trade or do murder-for-hire jobs for them.
Outlaw motorcycle groups like Hells Angels (traditionally Dutch working class guys) or Satudarah (a one percenter composed of guys from Moluccan origin and Dutch working class guys) were traditionally highly active, but the government has forbidden them these days. They're still active in a more under-the-radar kind of way.
The strongest "transnational" organized crime groups in the Netherlands are traditionally the groups from Turkey, the Balkans and from Lithuania.
The Turkish underworld is extremely active in the heroin trade in the Netherlands, but they also dabble in cocaine and other stuff. It most concerns well known criminal organizations based in the Black Sea region of Turkey and East/Southeast Anatolia (mostly of Kurdish origin). Networks consisting of Netherlands-born Turkish criminals also exist of course and often cooperate with the networks based in Turkey.
Serbian/Montenegrin and Bosnian organized crime used to have a powerful base in the Netherlands as well, but mostly operate low-key these days.
"Russian" OC in the Netherlands are actually mostly Lithuanian networks that are active in car theft rings and chop shops, arms trafficking and smuggling contraband tobacco, fuel and substances used for the production of synthetic drugs.
There are other transnational groups active, but they're less established. Albanian networks in the Netherlands are not as entrenched as their counterparts in Belgium or Germany. Nigerian groups deal drugs, but not on a major scale. Chinese Triad activity is very low-key these days. Italian organized crime mostly launders money in the Netherlands. Criminals from the UK and Ireland often flee to the Netherlands, but don't really conduct any local territorial operations.
Good overview TKJ! You could add some Polish groups Greeks and there were some Hungarians involved in the past. In the Amsterdam region there's also Israeli OC. The oldest 'foreign groups' are by far the Chinese going back to the early 1900s.
Good overview TKJ! You could add some Polish groups Greeks and there were some Hungarians involved in the past. In the Amsterdam region there's also Israeli OC. The oldest 'foreign groups' are by far the Chinese going back to the early 1900s.
Yes, Chinese organized crime used to be huge in the Netherlands. All of the major Hong Kong Triad groups as well as Hokkien/Teochew gangs from Singapore (mainly Ah Kong) used to have a presence in the Chinatowns of major Dutch cities. Nowadays Chinese organized crime in the Netherlands is extremely low-key, even more so than Serb/Montenegrin organized crime.
Polish are small fish when it comes to OC. Polish gangs mainly conduct some organized theft and some contraband tobacco smuggling. Their activities are highly overshadowed by those of the Lithuanian networks, who are larger, more organized and definitely more feared.
Greeks are very low-key as well, but every Greek enclave has some organized crime activity going on. Lots of illegal gambling and some smuggling. Never really heard about Greek organized crime in the Netherlands though...but there definitely is Greek organized crime going on in some Belgian border towns.
Never heard about Hungarian organized crime...must be a small time thing. You hear some stuff about Romanian organized crime, which is incredibly overrated. Romanian OC mostly concerns criminals from the gypsy community who do some theft, ATM skimming and some pimping... Hungarian OC must be the same kinda thing, but you never really hear about it.
Israeli OC is definitely big in Belgium so there's likely some involvement in the Netherlands as well. In Belgium it mostly concerns the activities of a few Georgian Jewish criminal clans, Jewish criminals with origins in Ukraine and a few traditional networks that are headquartered in Israel have shown up in Belgium as well. A lot of traditional Israel-based criminal families are of Moroccan Jewish origin and in Antwerp they sometimes work with local Moroccan crime families (who are Muslim, but don't care when it comes to money) but they also work with Dutch and Italian groups when it comes to the international ecstasy trade.
Fantastic intel guys. I forget how relevant the Netherlands are when it comes to the drug trade and crime. For a nation so small it’s crazy to see how complex and diverse its underworld is.
Never heard about Hungarian organized crime...must be a small time thing. You hear some stuff about Romanian organized crime, which is incredibly overrated. Romanian OC mostly concerns criminals from the gypsy community who do some theft, ATM skimming and some pimping... Hungarian OC must be the same kinda thing, but you never really hear about it.
Many Hungarian hookers in the red light districts here so in investigations in the human trafficking Hungarians have popped up here and there and in 2020 one of the biggest drug bosses Csaba S. was caught in Holland.
Never heard about Hungarian organized crime...must be a small time thing. You hear some stuff about Romanian organized crime, which is incredibly overrated. Romanian OC mostly concerns criminals from the gypsy community who do some theft, ATM skimming and some pimping... Hungarian OC must be the same kinda thing, but you never really hear about it.
Many Hungarian hookers in the red light districts here so in investigations in the human trafficking Hungarians have popped up here and there and in 2020 one of the biggest drug bosses Csaba S. was caught in Holland.
Csaba was more of a hitman who did jobs and sometimes trafficked cocaine for Serbian/Montenegrin organized crime. He was originally from Vojvodina.
Never heard about Hungarian organized crime...must be a small time thing. You hear some stuff about Romanian organized crime, which is incredibly overrated. Romanian OC mostly concerns criminals from the gypsy community who do some theft, ATM skimming and some pimping... Hungarian OC must be the same kinda thing, but you never really hear about it.
Many Hungarian hookers in the red light districts here so in investigations in the human trafficking Hungarians have popped up here and there and in 2020 one of the biggest drug bosses Csaba S. was caught in Holland.
Csaba was more of a hitman who did jobs and sometimes trafficked cocaine for Serbian/Montenegrin organized crime. He was originally from Vojvodina.
That is Csaba Dér who was arrested in Prague in 2019, the drug boss Csaba S. was caught here in 2020.
Never heard about Hungarian organized crime...must be a small time thing. You hear some stuff about Romanian organized crime, which is incredibly overrated. Romanian OC mostly concerns criminals from the gypsy community who do some theft, ATM skimming and some pimping... Hungarian OC must be the same kinda thing, but you never really hear about it.
Many Hungarian hookers in the red light districts here so in investigations in the human trafficking Hungarians have popped up here and there and in 2020 one of the biggest drug bosses Csaba S. was caught in Holland.
Csaba was more of a hitman who did jobs and sometimes trafficked cocaine for Serbian/Montenegrin organized crime. He was originally from Vojvodina.
That is Csaba Dér who was arrested in Prague in 2019, the drug boss Csaba S. was caught here in 2020.
Ah didn't know about that one! I heard that in Budapest you have some of gypsy origin who deal drugs and do a lot of pimping. Never really heard about Hungarian organized crime on a major scale.
There are definitely a lot of prostitutes from Hungary in the Benelux though.
Fantastic intel guys. I forget how relevant the Netherlands are when it comes to the drug trade and crime. For a nation so small it’s crazy to see how complex and diverse its underworld is.
For sure. Quite a few Western European countries have a huge and diverse underworld. Netherlands, UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Denmark all host homegrown as well as transnational organized crime networks that have a way above average reach. There are way poorer European countries (Portugal, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia...even Poland...to name a few) where of course criminal activity exists, but where the homegrown organized crime elements don't nearly have the reach and pull of those that are around in those mentioned comparatively "rich" Western European countries.
Traditional dutch organized crime has a long history ! The Bende van Oss refers to a turbulent period in which criminals from Oss, between 1888 and 1934, were responsible for many serious crimes.
The fact that criminals increasingly launder their money via cryptocurrencies is reflected in the latest confiscation figures from the judiciary. This shows that in the past year more than four times as many cryptocurrencies were taken from criminals as in 2020.
Justice took crypto currency worth 8.3 million in 2020 from criminals. The following year, that amount increased sharply: in 2021 it was 34.6 million euros. This was reported by the Public Prosecution Service on Thursday. In 2019, the confiscation of cryptocurrency as an asset for criminals was apparently still in its infancy. Then the judiciary 'plucked' 1.1 million in cryptocurrency.
The wanted drug lord Piet W. (Wortel) was arrested on Wednesday at a passport control in Aruba. It is the intention that he will be extradited to the Netherlands, because of a previous conviction.
W. was sentenced to seven years in prison in March 2014. He was found guilty of leading an international criminal organization that dealt in cocaine. The Public Prosecution Service had demanded 9 years in prison.
He was arrested for this in April 2012 in Barcelona. However, W. managed to flee. Since then, according to insiders, he has mainly lived in Suriname.
W. has Dutch nationality. He had applied for Surinamese nationality last year, but did not receive it.
Piet W. was seen by the judiciary as 'the undisputed leader' of a drug organization that was involved in cocaine trafficking for years. This organization was regarded as a multinational that operated worldwide.
Subsequently, a series of cocaine transports were mapped from South America to, among others, Hong Kong, the Cape Verde islands and the Netherlands.
Landgraaf shooting linked to Colombian crystal meth organization The house on the Groenstraat in Landgraaf, where a shooting took place on Wednesday evening, is linked by the police to Colombians who produce crystal meth , according to L1. The building came into the picture because a national investigation into the group of suspects has been going on for some time.
\\At around 8.45 pm a report was received to the police that local residents had heard shots in Groenstraat. Several bullet casings were found in front of the door of a house. During a search of the house, in addition to 40-year-old Bas C. (the owner of the property), two Colombians (Janller L., 51) and Alexander G., 48) and a woman were also arrested. The woman is said to be related to one of the Colombian men.
Drug lord Roger P. (50) disappears behind bars for fifteen years because of large-scale cocaine trafficking. The Rotterdammer, better known as 'Piet Costa', is considered a leader in Dutch organized crime.
Eric Oosterom 11-04-22, 14:46 Last update: 11-04-22, 17:21 P. heard the verdict unmoved on Monday afternoon. In the Rotterdam court he appeared again with a hood over his head and a mouth cap in front. He spoke once: when the judge asked him if he understood the verdict, he said he did.
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) previously described P. as a superpower that operated under the radar for years: he let himself be driven around in cheap cars, lived at various addresses and even had a 'man' to make restaurant reservations.
It enabled P. to rustle up large-scale cocaine shipments. The Public Prosecution Service held the Rotterdammer responsible for three lots - of 1015, 3776 and 1200 kilos respectively - of the white gold, but suspected that his actual trade was much larger.
Record year According to the officers, the ambitions of the Rotterdammer were also great. For example, P. and his companions would have talked about an unprecedentedly expensive batch of no less than 25,000 kilos. By way of comparison: in the whole of 2021, an absolute record year, the investigative services plucked 70,571 kilos of cocaine - street value: more than 5 billion euros - from containers within the port of Rotterdam .
According to the OM, P. lived for years like God in France. He ate in the fanciest restaurants, so to speak, walked around with tens of thousands of euros and drank the most expensive cognacs.
The Rotterdammer was arrested in the summer of 2020, after the police and the judiciary discovered him through the EncroChat hack. This encrypted chat service was extremely popular among criminals. EncroChat messages therefore formed the most important evidence against P. and the eight suspects who were on trial in the same trial.
