Ridouan Taghi literally and figuratively took a 9-mm handgun and blew the brains out of Europe’s famously liberal justice system.
The Morrocan gangster — who immigrated to Holland as a kid — has been called the continent’s “most feared drug lord,” leaving a trail of corpses on the charming cobblestone streets.
In March, Taghi, 46, was caged for life in a trial that saw security, jurors and other players masked for their safety. He was tried in a heavily guarded warehouse.
No wonder.
Taghi’s business maxim? “If you talk, you die.”
It wasn’t just rival mobsters he ordered iced but their brothers, sisters, lawyers and a journalist.
“We have had murders before. What’s new about Taghi is that he also targets individuals who are not part of the criminal underworld,” criminologist Robby Roks told the Wall Street Journal.
***
Violent crime, driven by a tidal wave of immigration, has spread like cancer through Europe.
Sweden — where things have become so dire the military has been called in — has the highest gun homicide rate on the continent; an open-air cannabis market in Denmark has been shuttered because criminal gangs took over; and, in Belgium, brazen gangbangers attempted to steal back cocaine seized by cops and customs.
But in Holland, it was Taghi’s show. His gang was named the ‘Mocro-maffia’ because members were mostly Moroccan and Antillean immigrants.
“He has managed to strike fear in the minds of people,” politician Ulysse Ellian told the Journal.
Taghi rose through the criminal underworld, smuggling eye-popping amounts of cocaine into Europe’s soft ports. He is reportedly a billionaire.
Prosecutors said Taghi was at the helm of a “well-oiled murder machine.” He was convicted of five counts of murder, with one victim a case of mistaken identity.
Recommended video
“Taghi was responsible for the mistake,” the judge said. “He decided who would be killed and spared no one. The amount of suffering Taghi caused to the victims and their loved ones is barely imaginable.”
Extreme violence was Taghi’s main weapon, the court heard. Enemies — real and perceived — and snitches lived in terror. Once, Taghi’s lieutenants placed a severed head outside the clubhouse of an underworld rival.
“By doing so, he prevented people from cooperating with the police. Such terror has a disruptive effect on society,” the judge said.
In a nod to Taghi’s bloodlust, the courts asked the media not to identify the adjudicators.
***
Taghi’s long tenure atop the Dutch criminal milieu ended when he was arrested in Dubai in 2019. He was extradited home to finally face justice in a slew of murders.
But even behind the concrete walls of an ultra-secure prison, he continued to run his empire of vice. Cops say the crime kingpin issued a steady stream of missives to his lieutenants on the outside.
Taghi pleaded not guilty, and lawyers for the underworld czar and his cohorts demanded an acquittal. The trial was unfair, the accused had already been convicted in the court of public opinion.
That was after witnesses were getting their tickets punched one way: To the Morgue.
***
A recent report by Europol — the EU’s law enforcement arm — said several countries are suffering from “unprecedented levels of drug market-related violence, including killings, torture, kidnappings and intimidation.”
The report also offered the sobering news there are more than 800 extremely violent criminal gangs with more than 25,000 members operating in the EU. Violent crime is now considered a threat on par with terrorism.
“Violence is destabilizing society and the social contract we have known,” Europol spokesperson Claire Georges told the Journal, adding violent incidents once were confined to transportation hubs.
“Now, violence is increasingly spilling into the streets with the risk of civilians being hurt.”
***
Like Miami, New York and Los Angeles in the past, the cocaine flooding into Europe from bumper crops in Colombia sparked the bloodshed. In 2019, more blow was seized in Europe than in North America.
Holland was a primo candidate for narcos looking to grow the business, and ruthless hustlers like Taghi made superb branch managers. And his homicidal bent was up to the task.
The killing began in 2015 when he ordered the murder of a spy shop owner who had given cops his records. A blogger who named him was clipped outside an Amsterdam sex club.
And the hits kept coming. Even veteran detectives were shocked to discover a shipping container transformed into a sound-proof torture chamber, complete with pliers, blowtorches — and a dentist’s chair with shackles.
When he was arrested, investigators discovered photos on his Blackberry of a woman being tortured.
Now, some Dutch politicians are hoping to go the route of the notorious supermax prison in Colorado that holds drug baron El Chapo, a slew of serial killers and terrorists.
They want the worst of the worst, forever cut off from the world: Two phone calls and one visit a month.
If there is a sea change to Western Europe’s famed liberalism, Taghi and others like him will be the reason, along with the naivete of the countries themselves.
@HunterTOSun