Mob boss Kinahan pal Taghi is jailed for life
Evil gang leader ‘spared no one’
KINAHAN ally and feared mob boss Ridouan Taghi has been sentenced to life in prison after a major trial in the Netherlands.
Taghi, who attended mob boss Daniel Kinahan’s wedding in Dubai in 2017, was arrested in the United Arab Emirates capital and extradited back to the Netherlands in 2019.
He was also a leading figure in a major European “super cartel” – of which Kinahan was also a member.
Yesterday Taghi, 46, was among three gang members handed life terms – while 14 others were sentenced to between 21 months and 23 years in jail after nearly six years of hearings in the “Marengo” trial.
Like Ireland, the Netherlands has no extradition treaty with Dubai – but Taghi’s extradition from there and now his conviction could spell bad news for the Kinahans.
This week Taghi was described in court as the “undisputed leader” of a “murder organisation” that terrorised Europe and was suspected of smuggling billions of euro worth of cocaine into ports across the continent.
Taghi was convicted on five murder counts, including on a man called Hakim Changachi, who was gunned down in Utrecht in 2017, in what prosecutors say was a case of mistaken identity.
The court also ruled that the mobster ordered the hit on another man who lived in the same block of flats as Changachi. The judge said: “Taghi was responsible for the mistake.
“He decided who would be killed and spared no one. The amount of suffering Taghi caused to the victims and their loved ones is barely imaginable.”
The court also ruled that he used extreme violence to intimidate enemies and potential police informants.
The presiding judge said: “By doing so he prevented people from cooperating with the police. Such terror has a disruptive effect on society.”
Taghi did not attend the final day of their trial – which took place in a tightlyguarded courthouse on the outskirts of the Dutch capital Amsterdam.
Reports say that heavily-armed police wearing body armour, ski-masks and helmets were seen patrolling the streets around the court.
The brother of a key witness, identified only as Nabil B, his lawyer and a journalist who acted as a confidante for the witness were all killed in the nearly six years since the trial opened.
Lawyer Derk Wiersum was gunned down outside his home in Amsterdam on September 18, 2019. Two men have been convicted of murder in his killing.
Journalist Peter R de Vries was also shot in Amsterdam as he walked to his car from a television studio on July 6,
2021. He died nine days later of his injuries. Prosecutors have sought life sentences for three of the suspects in his slaying.
Those murders gave the already grim trial “a pitch-black edge,” the presiding judge told a packed courtroom.
The judge lamented that De Vries “will never again sit in the press bench” at the court.
Dutch King Willemalexander called De Vries’ shooting “an attack on journalism, the cornerstone of our constitutional state and therefore also an attack on the rule of law”.
The Public Prosecution Service alleged that the defendants were part of a “completely unscrupulous murder organisation, which has carelessly and indifferently killed people”.
They said the fallout from the multiple slayings had “not only been felt for the next of kin, but have also had aftereffects more broadly in society”.
The court ruled that testimony from Nabil B. was trustworthy and could be used as evidence. The witness himself was also on trial and sentenced to 10 years. Other suspects received sentences ranging from life imprisonment to just under two years behind bars.
The court also accepted decrypted telephone messages as evidence in their verdicts.
Such terror has a disruptive effect on society PRESIDING JUDGE ON SENTENCING TAGHI