Justice
After almost three years on the run, Jimmy ‘Kleine Vis’ H. was arrested in Turkey. He was one of the leaders in the Mackerel file surrounding large-scale cocaine imports through the port of Antwerp. “He was deported from Turkey to Belgium,” the public prosecutor’s office said.
Sam Reyntjens, Joris van der Aa
Yesterday at 5:15 PM
43-year-old Jimmy H. had been wanted by the justice system in Belgium for almost three years after he was given a seven-year prison sentence in June 2021 as one of the key figures in the Mackerel case. That was a drug dossier surrounding the large-scale import of consignments of cocaine via the port of Antwerp. Together with his companion Abdelilah ‘Black’ or ‘Narcos’ EM, Jimmy H. is seen as the unofficial inventor of the ‘switch method’, a way to remove drugs. This switch consists of sports bags containing drugs being transferred from the South American container to a European container at the container terminal, thereby reducing the risk of inspection by customs. “The criminal organization had its own warehouses and firms for this purpose,” said the public prosecutor’s office.
Kleine Vis’s name also appears in an extensive money laundering investigation that had a breakthrough due to the cracking of Sky ECC. Central to that case is an Antwerp antique dealer who, together with Jimmy H. and his then partner, had a shop in the Kloosterstraat.
Fugitive Active Search Team
“The Turkish police were able to arrest the man on Tuesday. He was deported from Turkey and transferred to our country, where the Fast-team (Fugitive Active Search Team) of the federal police was able to arrest the man on arrival,” said Kato Belmans, spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office in Antwerp. H.’s lawyer, Master John Maes, is not aware of the arrest.
Jimmy H. is almost always mentioned in the same breath as his comrade ‘Black’. They were convicted together – Black received eight years in prison – and apparently also chose Turkey together in an attempt to avoid the hands of the justice in Antwerp. The ‘Little Fish’ managed to do that for longer than his companion. He was arrested in Istanbul last year because his residence papers were no longer in order. He has now left the closed immigration center with an ankle bracelet and after paying a deposit. Turkey has allowed his extradition to Belgium, but ‘Black’ has appealed that decision.
