Venezuelan arrested for murder of two Amsterdammers

A man from Venezuela was arrested in the Dominican Republic under suspicion of involvement in the murder of two Dutch citizens from Amsterdam last year.

According to the Dominican Republic's police the arrested man's name is Carlos José Gascon González alias El Gocho (the pig). He is supposedly the leader of a criminal group active in the Caribbean, South America, the USA and Europe. According to newspaper AD he was captured on Dec. 29 in the neighborhood of Piantini in Santo Doming, the capital city.

A thirty-year-old woman from Venezuela was also arrested under suspicion of crimes connected to the same incident last week in Spain. According to newspaper De Telegraaf, she attracted the Spanish police's attention with her nervous behavior as she was trying to leave the country by sea towards Morocco from the harbor of Algeciras on Dec. 29. By the security controls the police found out that she had an international arrest warrant issued by the Dominican Republic. The woman is now being held up in Spain.

The murdered Dutch were Rachid Benbouker (36) and Cuma Ceviz (34). Their bodies were found in June 2017 in a grave in a sugar plantation in El Seibo, in the eastern part of the country. Supposedly it was a assassination in the drug criminality. At the time of the murder witnesses told the local media they had heard several gun shots followed by the sound of a small plane. The next day they reported seeing three sport utility vehicles and an excavator going towards the plantation.

The Venezuelan suspect was said to be part of a gang alleged to take part in practices like kidnappings, drug dealing and money laundering.