Taghi's relative gets 5.5 years in prison for "key role" in criminal organization

On Monday, the court in Amsterdam sentenced 39-year-old Youssef T., the former lawyer and relative of suspected criminal gang leader Ridouan Taghi, to 5.5 years in prison. According to the court, evidence has proven that T. played a “key role” in Taghi’s organization. He made an “essential contribution” to the organization and was “an indispensable link” for Taghi while he abused his confidential position as a lawyer in a “very sophisticated way,” the court said.

According to the court, the Youssef T. file is an “example of how organized crime penetrates the upper world” and thus “seriously undermines the rule of law.” The aim of T.’s cooperation with Taghi was, among other things, to help Taghi escape or break out of prison.

Ridouan Taghi is the main suspect in the massive Marengo trial, which revolves around multiple assassinations and attempts thereto. He is in custody in the high-security prison in Vught.

T. became one of Taghi’s lawyers in March 2021 and visited him at the Vught prison many times. Over time, the judiciary discovered that the conversations between the two men were not about legal matters but criminal issues. T. acted as messenger, passing messages between Taghi in prison and alleged accomplices in the outside world.

After an investigation in which the two were secretly filmed and wiretapped, the police arrested T. on 8 October 2021 during a visit to Taghi. He has been in custody ever since. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) demanded seven years in prison against him. The court came to a lower sentence because it did not find it conclusively proven that T. passed on all the messages in the file. It is also not clear which crimes actually occurred because of these messages being passed on.

T. told the court that he cooperated with his criminal relative under immense pressure. But the OM believes that there was no such pressure. The court ruled that it cannot be determined whether T. passed on the messages freely or because he was pressured to do so.

T. “grossly damaged the confidence of his profession, but also society’s confidence in the legal profession and the rule of law,” the court said. “His actions have also sparked a political debate about the current rules regarding visits by lawyers to suspects in detention and whether those rules still suffice. This illustrates the social impact of this case.” T. is no longer a lawyer.