48-year-old Belgian drug criminal Tom M. was arrested on Thursday in the German capital Berlin. He still has to growl in Belgium and the Netherlands for a combined 19 years.
Belgian drug criminal Tom M. was caught yesterday in Berlin. This was evident from a statement from the Dutch police on Friday and the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office confirmed the arrest. Tom M. still has to serve an eight-year prison sentence in Belgium. In the Netherlands he faces an eleven-year prison sentence for trafficking in cocaine and heroin and also money laundering.
Tom M., who had been detained in Dubai for a long time in the past, had been on the run since 2020 after several convictions. In September that year he managed to escape during a raid on a Spanish villa. He was also on the ‘Europe’s Most Wanted’ website for a long time.
At the beginning of 2023, the police services received information about a possible whereabouts of the drug criminal in Germany. The Fast teams (Fugitive Active Search Team) of the German, Belgian and Dutch police worked together in the further investigation, coordinated by the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office. This led to an intervention on Thursday evening in a catering business in Berlin where the man had also been spotted last year.
The police were able to arrest a man in the catering business. It turned out to indeed be the fugitive, who had been able to stay inconspicuously in Berlin recently with a false identity.
Key figure
Tom M. is seen as a key figure in the gang of the Dutch drug baron Piet S., better known as “the Old Man” or the “Hague godfather”. He was caught in 2020, along with a number of companions, but M. was able to escape. The gang was involved in, among other things, cocaine transports from South America. Cracking encrypted messages between gang members led to the dismantling of the criminal organization. Piet S. was sentenced to 17 years in prison in the Netherlands in October last year.
A German court will now have to decide whether M. will first be extradited to Belgium or the Netherlands. Both countries are requesting his extradition for the prison sentence he still has to serve.
