Triple police barrage, military surveillance, drones and helicopters flying over the area, opaque windows and masked lawyers during their complaints. Radical provisions but possibility for “the trial of the century”, according to the Dutch media. Opened in February 2020, it takes place behind the secure walls of a brick building on the outskirts of Amsterdam, nicknamed “the bunker”.
In the statement: seventeen defendants, suspected of being part of an extensive drug trafficking network, the Mocro Maffia (from “Mocro”, a derogatory term meaning “Moroccan” in Dutch), an organization established in Belgium and the Netherlands, who managed to control a third of cocaine trafficking in Europe. At the head of this criminal network is the powerful cocaine baron Ridouan Taghi, 45 years old, a Dutchman of Moroccan origin, well known in the Rif underworld, detained since 2019 in an ultra-secure prison. With sixteen other co-defendants, he must, among other things, answer for thirteen homicides or homicide extraction and risks life imprisonment.
The investigation is the result of an investigation launched in 2017 by two fundamental elements: on the one hand, the testimonies of a witness, Nabil Bakkali, a repentant Mocro Maffia murderer and, on the other hand, messages intercepted by Europol on the Sky ECC encrypted communications networks and Encrochat. In 2018, the Netherlands issued an international arrest warrant against Ridouan Taghi, alias “de Kleine” (“the little one”, in Dutch), and one of his accomplices, Saïd Razzouki.
From small-time drug dealer to international drug trafficker
After a race of more than two years, Ridouan Taghi found refuge in Dubai, where he was arrested at his villa on December 16, 2019. Until then, he had not stopped running his “business” remotely. The main suspect in the Marengo case (name randomly assigned by computer), was transferred to the high-security Vught prison in the south of the Netherlands. The flight takes place on a plane specially chartered by the Dutch police. Two months later, his partner Razzouki was also arrested in Medellín, Colombia.
Born in 1977 in Bni Selmane, near Chefchaouen, a mountain town in the Rif, the young Ridouan raised his parents and two sisters who emigrated in 1980 to the Netherlands, to a disadvantaged suburb of Utrecht. It was there that his career as a gangster began, a few years later, within a small street gang, the Bad Boys. Young criminals who start by reselling cannabis resin, usually imported from Morocco, then quickly rise through the ranks within networks that are already very conditional, before starting their own cocaine trafficking.
A new form of criminal organization
Over the years, Taghi became one of the world's leading cocaine importers. It controls a third of traffic in Europe. Between 2015 and 2019, he reached the top of Mocro Maffia, which operates on the Old Continent, passing through the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. De Klein is now in charge of a fortune estimated at more than 100 million euros.
Supported by his close circle, which he himself nicknamed “the Angels of Death”, the godfather expands his dominance in the cocaine market by multiplying alliances, in particular with the Neapolitan Camorra and the Irish mafia. This new form of criminal organization, unlike the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, for example, does not necessarily respond to a vertical hierarchy. These super cartels now operate in a dispersed manner, of course, but also horizontally, that is, self-sufficient: even if one of the leaders is arrested, the business continues.
Systematic use of violence
But the Mocro Mafia developed mainly through the systematic use of violence. In the last ten years, more than a hundred people have died in score settling and other murders sponsored by their godfathers. In Morocco, the cartel is suspected of being behind the shooting at Café La Crème in Marrakesh in 2017, during which the son of a Moroccan judge was killed by mistake.
Another victim of Mocro Maffia, brother of Nabil Bakkali, a key witness at the beginning of the investigation, murdered in March 2018 – just six days after authorities revealed the help he provided in the investigation. On September 18, 2019, Bakkali's lawyer Derk Wiersum was once killed in the heart of Amsterdam. An investigative journalist, Peter de Vries, who became one of Bakkali's advisors and even media spokesman, was shot dead in exit of the recording of a television program, on July 6, 2021, again in the Dutch capital.
Since October 2022, serious kidnapping threats have targeted Mark Rutte, the head of the Dutch government, and 19-year-old Crown Princess Amalia. Living under police protection, he could have been used as a bargaining chip with Ridouan Taghi. The Belgian Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne, has been faced since September 2022 with the same logic of intimidation.
Inez Weski, drive belt?
Inez Weski, Ridouan Taghi's lawyer, arrives at the Amsterdam court to defend her client, on September 13, 2022. © ANP MAG/ANP via AFP
Although Marengo's trial is expected to end on October 20, 2023, an unexpected episode has put new spotlight on the godfather Taghi's saga: on April 21, his lawyer, Inez Weski, was arrested in Rotterdam and placed in detention. office sought. It would have allowed his client to communicate with the outside world from his maximum security prison and send messages to members of his criminal network.
Her arrest was controversial in the Netherlands, where a 68-year-old criminal lawyer is a real celebrity. And not just thanks to your no less infamous client. Her look is instantly recognizable: exclusively black clothes, huge exaggerated eyeliner, rings on her fingers... Inez Weski leaves no one indifferent. And she is as admired by the quality of her statements as she is despised by the controversial choices made by her clients. In 2017, for example, she defended another drug dealer of Moroccan origin, Saïd Chaou.
Against all expectations, she herself is now detained and worried by the courts, who suspect her of “participation in a criminal organization involved in international drug trafficking and money laundering”. As for the detailed evidence against them, we only know that messages described by the Belgian police were provided via Sky ECC.
Due to its exceptional nature, Inez Weski's arrest provoked outrage among Dutch lawyers. Last January, another of Taghi's lawyers – his cousin Youssef – was sentenced to five years in prison for having played a significant role in the Dutch cartel. According to Dutch media Telegraaf, These two arrests were part of a strategy by the National Directorate of Criminal Investigations that aims to dismantle the Mocro Maffia link by link.
Marengo's trial compromised
Last Monday, April 24, the judge decided that the suspicions against Inez Weski were serious enough to extend her preventive detention for two weeks. On the same day, her lawyers, Rob Baumgardt and Fébe Schoolderman, announced that she had resigned from defending Taghi.
A hearing in Marengo's trial has been scheduled for Tuesday, April 25. But the request of Nico Meijering and Christian Flokstra, two other defense lawyers, who said they were “shocked” by their colleague's arrest, was postponed. Ridouan Taghi finding himself defenseless at this time, it remains to be seen how this will affect the rest of the trial, in which several defendants, including Taghi himself, are at risk of arrest. he has perpetuity.
