A look inside the Netherlands’ violent narco wars, where Moroccan mafia drug barons torture BEHEAD rivals and women to sell drugs to Britain
DUTCH Cocaine King Ridouan Taghi has a simple, blood-curdling rule for those who cross him: “If you talk, you die.”
As the “undisputed leader” of the so-called Mocro mafia – which has left a trail of death and chaos throughout the Netherlands – it is not an idle boast.
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After Taghi was finally locked up for life last week after a wave of gruesome murders, he ran a “well-oiled killing machine,” the judge emphasized.
During the hearing, a Supergrass’ brother and lawyer were murdered by hitmen, while the Netherlands’ most famous TV journalist was also shot.
Dutch drugs and organized crime expert Dr Teun Voeten, 62, told me: “After their first murder, some people get a sense of empowerment in taking someone else’s life – and that can be addictive.
“In the end, I think Taghi loves violence, blood and… current.”
The crime lords in the Netherlands – a drug production and clearing house that helps supply British users – are astonishingly cruel.
A severed head was left outside an Amsterdam shisha lounge where rival gangsters gathered, its bloodshot eyes peering through the windows to alert those inside.
And photos found on Taghi’s phone showed a naked woman strapped to a dentist’s chair in a torture chamber.
No wonder this land of tulips and windmills, famous for its liberal tolerance, is called a ‘narco-state 2.0’.
His rule of law has come under heavy pressure.
Even Prime Minister Mark Rutte was forced to increase his personal security because he feared he was a kidnapper goal.
The most powerful narco-godfather was undoubtedly Taghi.
At the height of his power he controlled a third of all cocaine imports into Europe, which would have given him a fortune of almost £800 million.
One in forty Britons snort the drug, giving Britain the second highest cocaine use in the world after Australia.
So anyone in Britain who has snorted cocaine at raves, football At competitions and dinners over the past twenty years, Taghi’s wares would almost certainly have been tasted.
A former international drug trafficker tells me this demand is fueling cartel violence.
Known in underworld circles as The Tall Dutch Guy, 6-foot-2 Paul Meyer said, “If you don’t have users, you can’t sell your product.”
The prosperous 61-year-old explains why much of the narcotics wholesale, destined for Great Britain, first travels through the Low Countries.
He says: “I think the gates are in England It’s much harder to bring stuff in.
“Also, the punishment in England is very severe compared to Belgium And Holland.”
According to Paul, many drug transports that arrive in the Netherlands and are on their way to Great Britain follow a circuitous route. He adds: “Everything goes through Ireland.”
And he does not believe that Taghi’s imprisonment will lead to a decline in cocaine imports.
“Someone else will take over,” he insisted.
“There is too much profit involved.”
But many will still be wary of trespassing on Taghi’s turf.
“Today it is clear that our entire society is under pressure from this kind of violence. And they respond to that.”
Paul Vugts
Born in Benslimane, MoroccoIn 1977, at the age of two, he moved with his parents, who arrived as temporary workers, to the historic city of Vianen in central Netherlands.
The family lived in the De Hagen neighborhood — a mix of white working-class and Moroccan heritage residents — where four-story apartment buildings surround a shabby shopping area.
At the age of 17, Taghi had dropped out of school and was selling hashish on the street as part of the BAD Boys gang (BAD stands for ‘black and dangerous’).
Drug expert Dr. Voeten said to me: “That is also why you have to be very careful when you let small children handle it, because the small fish will become big fish. And Taghi became bigger and bigger.”
Amsterdam has a famously relaxed approach hempwhere tourists have been getting high for decades in the coffee shops on the canals.
Intelligent and ambitious, sharp to play chess player Taghi exploited connections in Morocco to buy hash at the source.
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He would soon set up a supply chain involving speedboats delivering the drugs from North Africa Spain and further to Northern Europe.
When the South American cocaine cartels started sending more of their products to Europe via West Africa and Morocco, Taghi already had a supply chain in place. Cocaine was much more profitable than hashish.
Taghi and his friends lived the gangster life and became known – because of their Moroccan origins – as the Mocro mafia.
Taghi switched his formal residence registration to Morocco and remained among the Dutch Police radar, despite having become a major drug player.
‘His bloodlust would be his downfall’
Then the bloodshed began.
In 2012, a row over drug seizures in Antwerp, Belgium, turned into a narco war.
It allowed the ruthless Taghi to eventually rule the Mocro Mafia, but his bloodlust would be his downfall.
In 2015, terrified rival drug trafficker Ebrahim “The Butcher” Buzhu went to police and said gangsters linked to Taghi were planting tracking devices on his associates’ cars.
A month later, the police in Vianen discovered a huge cache of weapons, including 60 pistols, 36 automatic weapons and nine hand grenades.
Researchers believed that Taghi had a “standing army” of heavily armed assassins.
In 2017, Dutch agents had access to an encrypted smartphone system used by Taghi’s men.
It showed that the gang thought Ronald Bakker – who owned a spy shop where they bought their tracking equipment – was talking to the police.
In a coded message, Taghi wrote: “No more traitors or double dealing.”
Two days later, Bakker was shot outside his home.
Others who met a gruesome end on Taghi’s orders were Samuel Erraghib – believed to be an informant – and his gang’s former hitman, Ranko Scekic.
Then, in 2017, Taghi’s killers blundered when they took out Hakim Changachi, 31, in a case of mistaken identity.
Changachi was a childhood friend of Nabil Bakkali, who supplied vehicles and worked as a lookout for Taghi’s gang.
Bakkali had arranged the car that would take the assassin to Changachi’s murder.
He confessed everything to his old friend’s family.
Now a high profile man, Bakkali became the supergrass witness who would collapse Taghi’s criminal empire, but at a personal cost.
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In 2018, his innocent brother Reduan, 41, was shot dead.
A year later, Bakkali’s lawyer Derk Wiersum, 44, was shot outside his home in Amsterdam.
Author Wouter Laumans, who wrote a book called Mocro Mafia, said: “It was the first time that someone in the ordinary world was hit because of something in the underworld.”
Taghi had evaded the police by traveling on false papers and regularly changing his appearance.
He was then finally arrested in a Dubai hideout in December 2019.
Officers discovered disturbing nude photos on Taghi’s phone of a woman strapped to a dentist’s chair in a makeshift torture chamber.
Police would later find scalpels, pliers, pruning shears and duct tape in the soundproof shipping container – known as the ‘Treatment Room’ – during a 2020 raid south of Rotterdam.
Dutch authorities assume that the images came from Dutch-Moroccan cocaine trafficker Naima Jilal, who disappeared in October 2019.
Police revealed: “One of the photos shows a naked woman tied to a chair with tape.
“Another photo showed an abdomen with a severed finger and toe.
“In a third, a woman lies naked on her stomach on the floor.”
For six years, Taghi was tried in a heavily fortified Amsterdam court nicknamed The Bunker and guarded by the Dutch army.
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Then came a murder that sent shockwaves around the world.
Well-known TV crime reporter Peter R. de Vries – who acted as a confidant of supergrass Bakkali – was shot.
Two years earlier, he had tweeted that the police had told him he was on Taghi’s ‘death list’.
If drones and helicopters hovered over the Bunker last week, Taghi was sentenced to life in prison for five murders, while 16 of his lieutenants were also convicted.
The three hits during the trial will be dealt with at a later hearing.
A Dutchman charity says the cocaine market has not been affected since Taghi’s arrest, with purity high and prices falling.
Paul Vugts, 49, crime reporter for Het Parool, told me that Dutch politicians and police were ‘naive’ about the narco threat gangs for years.
He said: “Today it is clear that our entire society is under pressure from this kind of violence. And they respond to that.”
And what about Buzhu the Butcher?
Kidnapped and brutally tortured, he was found in 2022 with a bullet in his head in a burned-out car near Cadiz, Spain.
A fate often reserved for those reckless enough to deceive the godfather of the Mocro mafia.
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