A man accused of a number of murders as head of one of Europe’s most feared drug gangs has reportedly told a Dutch court he will represent himself after the arrest of his lawyer over claims she helped him communicate from his prison cell.
Ridouan Taghi, who has been standing trial since 2021 with 16 other alleged members of a Dutch-Moroccan drug gang, lost his lawyer, Inez Weski, after her arrest last month on suspicion of collaborating with a criminal organisation.
According to local media briefed on the high-profile lawyer’s arrest, Weski is accused of passing information out from the Vught maximum security prison where Taghi is being held on charges in relation to the murder of at least 10 people and the attempted murder of others.
Since his extradition to the Netherlands from Dubai in 2019, Taghi has been in restricted custody, which forbids him from communicating with anyone other than his legal representation.
The court of Amsterdam had said the issue of Taghi’s representation would be discussed at a hearing next Wednesday.
The news agency ANP reported that Taghi had already indicated he would represent himself in the final stages of the long-running trial.
Weski, 68, a well-known face on Dutch television, resigned from Taghi’s defence team after her arrest. She has been suspended by the Dutch bar council. Her pre-trial detention was extended on 4 May for 30 days.
Geertjan van Oosten, the director of the Dutch Association of Defence Counsel, said few lawyers in the Netherlands would have wanted to represent Taghi. “I think a lot of people will breathe a sigh of relief,” he said.
Both Derk Wiersum, the lawyer who had been representing Nabil Bakkali, a former gang member turned chief state witness in the so-called Marengo trial, and the journalist Peter R De Vries, who had been helping the whistleblower deal with media queries, were murdered, in 2019 and 2021 respectively. They were both gunned down in the street.
The shootings had drawn comparison in the Dutch media with the mafia assassinations of investigating magistrates in Italy in the 1990s. Taghi, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges in his trial, also denies any involvement in those killings.
André Seebregts, a lawyer who is representing an earlier counsel to Taghi, who has also been accused of acting as a messenger for him, had claimed in a hearing last September that Weski had succumbed to pressure to pass on information from prison.
In response, Weski had described herself as “speechless” at the time. She said: “This is unbelievable. Surely he must know what the consequences are if you say something like that.” She said the claims were “incorrect, suggestive and reprehensible”.
Weski said the public prosecution service had previously investigated such claims and found no evidence. She is unable to communicate under the terms of her detention.
