Man arrested on Curacao for playing leading role in Peter R. de Vries's assassination
The authorities arrested a man on Curacao on Monday on suspicion of playing a leading role in a criminal organization that was behind the assassination of crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) announced. He will be flown to the Netherlands on a private flight.
Sources told NOS that the suspect is 39-year-old Raily B., who has been imprisoned in Curacao since 2014. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for involvement in a 2014 shooting at Curacao’s Hato airport, in which two men died and seven bystanders were injured. They were riddled with bullets from automatic guns at the exit of the arrivals hall.
B. drove the getaway car for the two gunmen. They were all members of the notorious No Limit Soldiers gang, according to the broadcaster. The shooting was a settling of scores by a rival drug gang.
In the De Vries case, the OM suspects B. of directing the perpetrators of the assassination by phone from his cell. The man was born in Curacao and has Dutch nationality.
Crime writer Peter R. de Vries was gunned down on 6 July 2021 on Lange Leidsedwarsstraat in the center of Amsterdam after appearing on RTL Boulevard. He succumbed to his injuries in the hospital nine days later.
In June last year, the court sentenced the two perpetrators of the murder, gunman Delano G. and getaway driver Kamil E., to 28 years in prison. Krystian M., who organized the murder, was sentenced to 26 years and one month in prison. A fourth suspect got 14 years for supplying the weapons. Two men who stood lookout and filmed De Vries as he lay critically injured on the street got 10 years. Three other suspects were acquitted. An appeal is ongoing in all nine cases.
According to the OM, the investigation into the people who ordered De Vries’s murder has continued even after the convictions. “In this investigation into the higher echelon, the man in Curacao has emerged as a suspect,” the OM said on Monday.
The OM is convinced De Vries was murdered because he acted as a confidant of the key witness in the Marengo trial against Ridouan Taghi and his gang. Key witness Nabil B.’s brother and lawyer were previously assassinated. Taghi denied the accusation and was not a suspect in the De Vries case, but he was sentenced to life in prison earlier in 2024 in the Marengo case.
