The Dutch drug fairytale is well and truly over and rather than legislating they’ve spent years looking the other way and fudging solutions the result as Der Speigel succinctly puts it, is the following
Drug gangs in the Netherlands have long since graduated from hashish to cocaine – and from dealing on the streets to a spree of contract killings. Police, lawyers, journalists: All are at risk of falling victim to the drug violence that has gripped the country.
A dark night sky hangs over Amsterdam as Peter Schouten drives home on Nov. 2, 2020. The lawyer is coming from a TV talk show, where he appeared with his colleague Onno de Jong and with Peter R. de Vries, a well-known crime reporter. He is traveling in an armored car, complete with bodyguards, their automatic weapons in the door compartments. Such has been Schouten’s life since he and the other two began working with the country’s most important witness – a criminal who has testified against the Dutch cocaine mafia. The man’s brother has already been shot and killed for this reason, as was his first lawyer, Schouten’s predecessor.
Who is next on the kill list? Schouten? De Jong? De Vries? Schouten looks out through bulletproof glass and sees De Vries walking alone on the street. The car drives up to him and Schouten asks: “Peter, what are you doing here alone in the dark?” De Vries: “I am walking to my car.” Schouten, according to his recollection of the conversation, replies: “But that’s insane.”
“In the problem areas off southeastern Amsterdam, young men are queuing up to commit murder on behalf of the gangs.”
Eight months later, on July 6 of this year, De Vries was again walking through Amsterdam’s city center. It was to be his final walk – and would end in another 250 paces. He had become a living legend. As a journalist, he had not only reported on criminal cases, but had also solved many of them through his TV show, “Peter R. de Vries, Kriminalreporter.” A one-man special commission, de Vries was, for his millions of viewers, proof that a single person could accomplish more than the entire law enforcement apparatus. He was brave. Fearless.
And he never used bodyguards.
On that July 6 evening, de Vries was again coming from a TV appearance, strolling along Lange Leidseswarsstraat from the studio to the parking garage where his BMW was parked. On his right and left were typical Dutch brick facades topped with hoisting beams from the old gable lifts. Below them, the kitchens of the world: an Indian restaurant called Bollywood, an Italian named O Sole Mio, a Thai place. There were tables set up outside for people meeting to eat, talk, laugh. Indeed, De Vries’ final steps led him through a street that embodied the country’s self-image: Cosmopolitan, light and lively, safe. A nice façade.
Then the street grew quieter, more residential. De Vries could see the entrance to the parking garage ahead, but he didn’t see the young man lurking on the staircase leading up to the right, to building numbers 176 and 178. The man had been waiting for De Vries. When the reporter walked past, the man fired five shots. One of them hit de Vries in the head.
He collapsed in front of a window plastered with advertising, one of them for a place called Cooldown Café ‘De Kleine’ – a bitterly ironic coincidence in this horrific story. “De Kleine” was the former nickname of Ridouan Taghi, the suspected drug kingpin against whom the chief witness had testified.
»Woooooooooooooppppppppwoooooooooppppppppppp hahahaha insch’allah!«
Decrypted text message
There is no proof that Taghi sent the killer, even though he is the prime suspect. His lawyer says that her client had nothing to do with the De Vries murder. Formerly the most-wanted man in the Netherlands, Taghi has been in custody since his arrest in 2019. At first, he told his interrogators that the state should save its money and just “give me a life sentence.” He has since clammed up, however, and instructed his lawyer to deny all accusations. Still, the testimony of the chief witness isn’t the only thing incriminating him. There is also evidence provided by encrypted messages that have been decoded. These include an excited “Woooooooooooooppppppppwooooooooooppppppppppp hahahaha insch’ allah!” after another murder. His lawyer claims these messages weren’t from Taghi or from his cell phone.
Read the full article at
https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/narco-state-netherlands-the-slippery-dutch-slope-from-drug-tolerance-to-drug-terror-a-4c064859-9faf-495f-b1f7-c74900910568
