Willem Holleeder

Prosecutors in the Willem Holleeder murder trial have demanded life imprisonment for the notorious defendant. Holleeder, an alleged organized crime mastermind, is accused of ordering or otherwise taking part in the murders of five different men, and also manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, and running a criminal enterprise.

One prosecutor, Sabine Tammes, said Holleder was driven entirely by greed no matter what consequences befell his victims and their relations. "In the end, it was always about money," she said.

Dino S. was arrested in his cell on Monday morning for involvement in the assassinations of Willem Endstra in May 2004 and John Mierement in November 2005, the police said on Monday. S. is already serving a life sentence for ordering the assassinations of Kees Houtman and Thomas van der Bijl, Nu.nl reports.

The police arrested thee suspects for trying to assassinate a 31-year-old man from Alkmaar on an industrial estate on Moezelhavenweg near the A5 in Amsterdam on Tuesday morning. The victim, an employee of a spy shop, was beaten with a firearm, NOS reports.

 The perpetrators actually wanted to shoot the victim, but their firearm malfunctioned and wouldn't fire. So they beat him with the firearm instead, before fleeing in a stolen Audi Q5. The Alkmaar man was seriously injured.

Astrid Holleeder - sister of criminal kingpin Willem Holleeder - fiercely criticized the way she, her sister Sonja and Sandra den Hartog are being protected after testifying against her brother. In her new book Dagboek van een getuige, she writes that their protection against possible retaliation by Willem Holleeder, fails on all sides, NU.nl reports.

The three women have been in witness protection since they gave testimonies against Holleeder. 

A defect on a rented night-vision camera was the reason that Freddy Heineken's kidnappers got away with 30 million euros the night the ransom was dropped, former Justice Minister Frits Krothals Altes reveals in his new book Zeven politieke levens. The kidnappers were on the run for two years before the police finally caught up to them, AD reports.

In court on Friday Willem Holleeder accused his sister Astrid of sabotaging the process of the criminal trial against him. "All this whining is not because of the magistrate or my lawyers, but Astrid. She wants to keep control", Holleeder said in the 10th pro-forma hearing in the lawsuit against him, AD reports.

Astrid Holleeder, sister of organized crime boss Willem Holleeder, has "gone underground" a good two months after her book Judas was published, she said in an interview with Libelle.

In the book Astrid writes about her family, making several accusations about her brother Willem Holleeder. Judas was a best seller in the Netherlands for ten weeks after it published. Several different translations were announced and there will also be an audio book.

Update: The Public Prosecutor demanded life in prison against four  suspects in the appeal of the massive Amsterdam gangland murders trial known as the Passage-process in court on Tuesday. The trial started in 2007 and is still going. It revolves around seven assassinations - mostly in the Amsterdam underworld - and 10 suspects. The 11th suspect Ali Akgun was assassinated in 2014, NOS reports.

Willem Holleeder tried to have his sisters assassinated from the maximum security prison in Vught, the Public Prosecutor revealed during a pro-forma hearing in the case against the infamous criminal on Monday

The Public Prosecutor is back in court on Friday trying to get leaked testimony by criminal Willem Holleeder and his sisters Sonja and Astrid off the internet. After the court ordered crime site VIinderscrime.nl to remove the documents from their site, a private person named Sebastiaan Beens put the documents on his own site.

Leaked documents from the so-called Passage-process show crime boss Willem Holleeder accusing his sisters of drug trafficking. The Public Prosecutor is investigating the leak.