Taghi’s lawyer completes plea: ‘Unfair process’

Today is the last day of a long series of pleas in the trial against the group around Ridouan Taghi. In recent months, the lawyers of 16 suspects have argued why their clients should not be convicted.

Only the case of a 17th suspect needs to be dealt with further, because his extradition to the Netherlands took longer than expected. A sentence will follow in two weeks. The Public Prosecution Service demanded long prison sentences against the rest, including life imprisonment against Taghi and four others.

Since September, the defense has had the floor in the Marengo trial. Inez Weski, the lawyer of the main suspect Taghi, already announced that she inadmissibility of the Public Prosecution Service and would otherwise be acquitted due to lack of evidence. In recent months, other lawyers have also made a similar appeal to the court.

The biggest point of criticism remains the decrypted chat messages from crypto phones, which openly talk about liquidations. According to Weski and her colleagues, the messages that the Public Prosecution Service uses as evidence have been obtained illegally, are incomplete and cannot be checked.

Yet in other liquidation cases, many suspects have already been convicted on the basis of these types of chats. But because judges must make their own decisions in each case, the lawyers in the Marengo trial continue to try to undermine the message evidence.

According to the Public Prosecution Service, the chat messages correspond to the nearly one hundred statements made by crown witness Nabil B. about Taghi and his organization. The defense also has a lot of criticism on the use of the key witness.

“The more he reported to incriminating cases about Taghi, the more money and sentence reduction he could get,” argued Weski, just like her colleague Nico Meijering, who assists another suspect. They believe that no statement by Nabil B. should count as evidence.

Nabil B.’s lawyers voiced a different sound. In their plea, they emphasized that he has proven to be reliable, that all his claims have been checked and that they always match what the police later read back in the chat messages. This also says the OM.

The Public Prosecution Service sees Taghi as the client for a large number of murders, six of which were successful. In recent times Weski has argued case by case that there is really too little evidence for his involvement. According to her, the evidence that is there consists of pieces of crown witness statements, supplemented with “snippets” of chat messages. And those two pieces of evidence are no good, she thinks.

His arrest also violated all rules, Weski believes. The Netherlands allegedly gave misleading information to Dubai, as a result of which Taghi was arrested there and forcefully expelled from the country. “He looked like a trapped deer,” Weski described his battered state. Since then, Taghi would be wrongly portrayed as a threat to the state, leading to increasingly stricter measures in the Extra Secure Institution where he has been detained since 2019.

For example, Taghi is no longer allowed to call, receive visitors and have no contact with fellow detainees. Writing letters is only allowed with family, but Taghi is not allowed to describe emotions or quote religious texts, because it is feared that he will use code words in them. “The next step is to put him in cement with his feet and let it harden,” Weski sneered in court.

The result of all this is that Ridouan Taghi has not had a fair trial, according to her. Her client should therefore no longer be prosecuted and otherwise acquitted. She also advocates this for two other suspects in the case, who have been referred to by the key witness as important aides to Taghi.

The main suspect himself completely ignored the defense of his lawyer in recent months. Taghi chose to remain in jail and did not follow the sessions remotely.

The verdict is tentatively scheduled for October.