Netherlands: Two men convicted of lawyer’s murder are linked to further killings

Two men jailed last October for 30 years for the murder of a Dutch lawyer representing the key state witness in the Marengo gangland murder trial have been linked by police to two earlier killings. They were committed in the former Netherlands colony of Suriname.

The defendants in the Marengo trial include Ridouan Taghi, formerly the Netherlands’ most wanted criminal, and 16 others, allegedly members of the Dutch-Moroccan “mocro mafia”, charged with a series of interconnected killings arising from feuds in the drugs underworld from 2015 to 2017.

Lawyer Derk Wiersum, who represented crown witness “Nabil B”, was one of three people connected with the trial who have been shot dead.

He was killed outside his home in Amsterdam in September 2019 as he said goodbye to his wife. Journalist Peter R de Vries was shot dead in July 2021, as was Nabil’s B’s brother in 2018.

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Two men, Giërmo B (37) and Moreno B (32), described as “hired assassins” by the judge, were sentenced to 30 years each last October for Mr Wiersum’s murder – and it is these two men who are considered potential suspects in a double killing five months earlier in Suriname, South America’s smallest state.

Detectives in Suriname’s capital, Paramaribo, say they believe the same two men may have been involved in a drive-by shooting in May 2019 in which a 19-year-old Surinamese man and a 43-year-old Dutch citizen were fatally injured outside a coffee shop near the capital.

Assassination

They say they have reason to believe that the aim of the attack was the assassination of the Utrecht man, known only as “DG”, while he was out of the Netherlands.

Two men in a Nissan Fuga car drove past the victims and one of the men opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing both. The car was later found burning.

Surinamese police say they suspected the killings were linked to drugs and, given the Utrecht “mainland” connection, may have had a gangland element.

They say co-operation with police in Amsterdam — Suriname was a Dutch colony until 1975 — led to new avenues of investigation, and the double murder was reopened as a cold case in Suriname.

They say further arrests cannot be ruled out in either jurisdiction as they investigate who may have ordered DG’s killing.