The discovery of three charred and apparently mutilated bodies in the coastal resort of Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague, has caused little surprise in the Netherlands.
The country is experiencing a sickening increase in violence among ethnic-based gangs in the country vying for control of parts of the drugs trade. It is believed the young Irish people who had been living in the fifth-floor apartment in Scheveningen had been involved with eastern European suppliers of chemicals used in the manufacture of the drugs amphetamine and ecstasy.
Irish and British criminals have been attracted to Holland over the past two decades because of the availability of the "precursor chemicals" used in the manufacture of both drugs.
European police say the reason for the increase in the supply is the entry into the drugs trade of extraordinarily violent criminal gangs from eastern Europe and particularly from former Yugoslavia.
Criminal figures from the civil war in the Balkans in the 1990s have now moved full time into the rich drugs markets of northern Europe. The Yugoslavians have been fighting to establish themselves alongside equally vicious gangs from Russia, the central European countries of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Moroccans and Colombians.
According to one police source yesterday, the drugs gangs in the Netherlands are engaged in a competition of violence in which increasingly sadistic and bizarre methods of killing are used to intimidate the opposition.
In this brew there are also small numbers of English and Irish criminals willing to risk their lives because of the remarkable profits to be made from drugs.
Some Irish criminals, particularly men with fearsome reputations for violence, have forged successful alliances and are apparently prospering in the Netherlands.
Among these are two Dublin men who were former members of the splinter republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). Both were killers before they left for Holland in the mid- to late 1980s. Both are said to have built very substantial drugs networks.
According to Garda sources, the young Irishmen who were killed in Scheveningen were not regarded as serious drug-dealers and certainly not as professional criminals.
The sources said two were suspected of dealing in drugs and left Ireland in recent years when their activities became known to i the Garda and they established a base in the Netherlands, attracted by the possibilities of setting up a drugs supply route.
It is believed they were buying base chemicals from gangsters who occasionally called to their apartment.
The police in The Hague believe that the Irishmen might have reneged on a payment for chemicals or that they may have been blamed for the seizure by police of drugs.
The Dutch police found amphetamines and a tablet press in the apartment. Neighbours spoke of the young Irishmen living by night and, when seen, often under the influence of drugs.
On Saturday morning while other residents tried to sleep, men forced their way into the apartment and mutilated and killed three young men and stuffed their bodies into the bathroom. The bodies were apparently doused with flammable liquid and set on fire.
Forensic examination of the flat and post-mortems on the bodies quickly showed the young men had not died in the fire.
Five passports were found in the remains of the apartment. Four belonged to young Irish men including the three who died. The fifth is believed to be of a 27-year-old Northern Ireland woman. The whereabouts of the missing man and woman were not known yesterday.