CRIMEDrug Gangs Threatening Rule of Law in the Netherlands
The Netherlands is a country known for upholding the rule of law. But the yearlong investigation of the murder of crime reporter Peter R. de Vries has exposed cracks in the Dutch legal system.
It was a crisp autumn morning in early November and a day of hope for criminal lawyers Peter Schouten and Onno de Jong, and journalist Saskia Belleman.
They had all gathered at the Amsterdam Rechtbank — the city’s main courthouse — to find out how the court planned to proceed with the investigation around the death of their close friend and colleague, Peter R. de Vries.
But just before midday, the court ruled that the entire case had to be reheard early next year due to legal issues linked to the emigration of a judge involved in the case, and the discovery of new evidence in July, which added a new layer of complexity.
With solemn and slightly frustrated faces, they walked out of the courtroom after the announcement.
A spokesperson for the de Vries family told reporters that while they were grateful to the court for trying to nail down the culprits, the entire process had been an ordeal for the family.
Belleman, a court reporter at Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf shared a similar sentiment, adding that delaying the verdict and now rehearing the case had also had a personal impact on many court and crime journalists like her.
“I was also frustrated by the thought that it had to be done all over again,” she told DW.
“But on the other hand, over the last few weeks, I started realizing it’s inevitable if there are new suspects who can tell us something more about what happened that night, like who gave the order to pull the trigger. Then it is relevant to do it all over again,” she said.
De Vries Case Caught Up in a Legal Mess
Peter R. de Vries, a renowned crime reporter in the Netherlands, was gunned down in July 2021, sparking anger and spreading shock waves across the country.
At the time of his death, de Vries had been the confidant of Nabil B. — the crown witness who testified in an extensive criminal trial known as Marengo against Ridouan Taghi, a Moroccan-Dutch drug mafia leader.
Prosecutors investigating the de Vries case suspect Taghi’s gang could be behind the murder, making the yearlong trial a “legal mess” according to Peter Schouten.
“Everybody is intimidated by the drug gang — the police, judges, the prosecutors,” Schouten, 65, a criminal lawyer representing Nabil B, in the Marengo trial, told DW.
Schouten explained how this intimidation, together with these two criminal cases now being linked, had resulted in prosecutors withholding information to protect their witnesses, the lawyers of the accused demanding separate trials and a judge involved in the case leaving the country.
