@Yigido

I've read the book "Mocro maffia". You won't really learn anything new, but it gives a good overview of the entire conflict. It's also a very quick and entertaining read.

With Benaouf I got the impression he has sided with the group of Houssine Ait S. He's originally from Eindhoven, but while working at bars and gyms throughout Amsterdam he got into contact with some of the big Moroccan (and Antillean) criminals. He's a smooth guy, immediately well liked by people around him. But when he really slipt into the underworld he allegedly was extremely determined to prove himself. He's ambitious but inexperienced, which makes him a bit too ambitious for his own good. After the Houssine group split off from Martha, Benaouf sided with Houssine. It's said that Benaouf was one of the main organizers of the infamous cocaine shipment at the port of Antwerp. He allegedly really travelled throughout the Netherlands to form contacts with other career criminals who would act as investors of the transport. Supposedly he was the one promising to the criminal investors that if something would go wrong with the shipment, they were allowed to hold him personally accountable.

The "stolen" cocaine remains a mystery. First it was assumed that the "Turtles" (the El Y. family) stole the cocaine as a favour to Martha. The fact that the Turtles were suddenly driving around in new expensive cars, wearing new designer clothes and jewelry as well as poppin bottles in every club from Antwerp to Tangier didn't really help them. You could call it suspicious to say the least. Getting the Turtles to do the job also wasn't really a well-thought out move from Houssine's group. They were a final solution. One of the more famous "unload crews" in Antwerp, Papadatos' group, fucked so many Netherlands-based gangs over that no Dutch group trusted him anymore. And when you decided to strike back at Papadatos, the Greeks would allegedly kill or hurt you quicker than you could do to them. Adding to this, some other Antwerp unload crews were in fear of the Greeks so it was risky to let them do the job as well. The Turtles were thought to be reliable by Benaouf, but what he apparently didn't know back then was that they had a history with Martha, something Houssine's group found out later. This all added to the suspicion.
But on the other hand, the police afterwards DID say they had confiscated a shipment at the same time Benaouf's one went missing. And at first people were going around telling that the Turtles had to pay an insane amount of ransom to compensate for the stolen load (and also to prevent their little brother from getting put through a meat grinder by a group of enforcers), but there are also many who doubt that story. The stolen cocaine remains a mystery.

There isn't much information to be found on Houssine Ait S. other than that he was one of Martha's former lieutenants who started for himself and took over some of his contacts when Martha was locked up. The book is more about characters like Rida Bennajem and Benaouf and only mentions Ait S. a couple of times. But he seems to be the main guy from his group, the leader with the necessary contacts.

Those guys killing each other off right know are just part of the two of the groups operating in Amsterdam right now. According to law enforcement are dozens of them operating in the area that are quietly slipping under the radar. You have the group of the now deceased Samir and Bahida. They were/are bigger than the groups that are interlocked in this so-called "Moroccan war". Apparently they supported Houssine's group, but they really belong to another outfit. While it may seem that those two feuding groups "run" Amsterdam, the so-called "Moroccan mafia" is in reality more of a hype. Now they definitely are serious gangsters who made a lot of money from the cocaine trade and they definitely are organized crime. But they're far from the only ones operating in and around the capital. For instance, there supposedly is also a group from Zaanstad composed of Antilleans, Surinamese and Moluccans that's just as big as the Moroccan groups that mostly come from West-Amsterdam. And it's said that there is at least a dozen of these kind of groups operating in the capital.
And then we're just talking about the "new" and upcoming organized crime firms that originate from the impoverished main immigration areas. Not about the traditional crime "powerhouses" in the capital: the native Dutch firms (often linked with the Hells Angels), the Turkish groups (often having good connections with the Dutch), the Chinese Triads (Hong Kong Triads like 14K, Sun Yee On and Wo Shing Wo as well as Taiwanese Triads and Fujianese groups all operate in Amsterdam) and the Serbian/Montenegrin groups. While it has been exceptionally quiet about the Serbs, all of the traditional powerhouses are still going strong in the capital. They just don't make as much noice as they used to and more importantly, they have much better connections in the upperworld and are more professional in making use of corruption than the upcoming gangs are.
There are also other groups that have a presence. They don't really belong to the "powerhouses" but they have a presence nonetheless. All of the major Italian forms of OC (Sicilian mafia, Ndrangheta, Camorra and Sacra Corona Unita), the Yakuza, Albanian, Kurdish, Irish, Russian, British (often from Liverpool) and Bulgarian gangs all have been detected in the capital. Mostly they find shelter in Amsterdam, but they also operate some businesses over there.
The newer Moroccan-Antillean-Surinamese-Moluccan groups are comparable to the Algerian gangs in Marseille. They're ambitious and are gradually making their transition towards organized crime (in turn getting more and more accepted by the traditional powerhouses- in Marseille's case the Corsicans), but they still have quite some way to go in terms of professionalism.

Last edited by TheKillingJoke; 12/15/14 03:14 AM.