Netherlands’ Moroccan mafia murder trial stalls after top lawyer for defendant arrested

The Netherlands’ most notorious gangland murder trial has been suspended after Inez Weski (68), high-profile lawyer for the main defendant, dramatically stood down from the trial on Monday following her arrest at the weekend.

Ms Weski, who was detained by armed detectives “on suspicion of participating in a criminal organisation”, announced that she was severing her relationship with her client, Ridouan Taghi (45), after she was remanded in custody on Monday afternoon for a fortnight.

In what has been named the Marengo trial, 17 suspects are accused of involvement in a number of murders and attempted murders linked to the country’s widely feared so-called “mocro mafia” or Moroccan mafia.

Confidentiality rules

Taghi, formerly the Netherlands’ most wanted criminal, has been in solitary confinement with an unusually tough regime of restrictions since he was extradited from Dubai in 2019.

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It is understood Ms Weski’s arrest — described by one legal expert as “quite unique in the Netherlands” — is based on the suspicion that she may have breached confidentiality rules by passing messages to and from Taghi when she visited him at Nieuw Vosseveld maximum security jail.

Given the unusual nature of the case, the head of the Dutch bar association is reported to have been notified by the public prosecutor’s office before Ms Weski’s arrest late on Friday.

The lawyer’s home and office were searched as part of the police investigation.

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[ Dutch crime reporter De Vries dies nine days after being shot in head ]

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It is not the first time it has been alleged that Ms Weski may have succumbed to intense pressure to breach professional ethics in her representation of Taghi, and in the past she has been vociferous in her denials — even when the allegations came from fellow lawyers.

“This is unbelievable,” she said in response to one allegation. “Surely he must know what the consequences are if you say something like that.”

Marengo trial

Ms Weski has been a practising lawyer for more than 40 years. Apart from representing Taghi, she numbered among her clients the former president of Suriname, Desi Bouterse, who launched a coup in 1980.

The Marengo trial, whose name was reportedly randomly picked by computer, is one of the biggest, and certainly most complicated, murder trials in Dutch history, with multiple suspects all believed to be connected to a series of six assassinations between 2015 and 2017 as part of a Moroccan mafia drugs war.

At the heart of the trial is chief prosecution witness Nabil B, whose lawyer, Derk Wiersum, was shot dead on the doorstep of his home in Amsterdam in September 2019.

Following Wiersum’s death, Nabil B struck up a relationship with investigative journalist Peter R de Vries, who began to advise him on the handling of his case. De Vries was also shot dead in Amsterdam in July 2021.

Prosecutors have demanded a life sentence for Taghi in the Marengo trial.