Another Taghi lawyer arrested for passing on criminal kingpin's messages
The police arrested a 36-year-old lawyer representing Ridouan Taghi on Thursday on suspicion of enabling the man to continue running his criminal organization by passing on his messages. This is the third legal representative of Taghi to be arrested for participating in his criminal organization in this way. One has already been convicted and sentenced to prison. The case against the second, Inez Weski, is still ongoing and had a preliminary hearing in court today.
The police arrested the latest lawyer while he was visiting Taghi in the high-security prison in Vught, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) announced. He was remanded into custody after his arrest. “The public prosecutor has imposed all restrictions on him, which means that he is only allowed ot have contact with his own lawyer.
The criminal investigation into this lawyer started in December 2024 based on information from the intelligence service AIVD. “The intelligence and security service reported that the lawyer was passing on messages from his client [Ridouan Taghi] to people from [Taghi]’s criminal network,” the OM said.
The arrested lawyer will be arraigned on Friday.
Taghi’s former lawyer, Inez Weski, had a preliminary hearing in court today, though she did not attend. She is also accused of passing on messages between Taghi and his henchmen. In court, her lawyers argued that the case against her should be thrown out because the authorities violated the rules when arresting her in April 2023. They also asked for an extensive investigation into the conditions in which Weski was detained, NOS reported.
This week, the Justice and Security Inspectorate concluded that Weski had been detained for nine days at an unknown location, out of the view of the supervisory authorities and “partly outside the protection of the law.”
According to Weski’s lawyers, the OM structurally and deliberately violated the rules and did everything it could to cover up the truth about Weski’s detention. “She was in danger of her life in isolation with 50 anonymous rotating guards in an underground nuclear bunker under Camp Zeist,” said lawyer Carry Knoops. “She was not allowed to know where she was and those around her were also not allowed to know, as if she had disappeared off the face of the earth.”
According to Knoops, Weski was denied medical care while in the secret detention. Weski reported several life-threatening situations to the managers of the detention staff, but there was little or no response, the lawyers said. After nine days, she was transferred to the women’s prison in Nieuwersluis. When she was released about a month later, she had to immediately undergo heart surgery,” the lawyers said.
The OM did not make any new statements about the case against Weski during the hearing. The court will later decide whether furthe investigation will beconducted into Weski’s imprisonment.
