Dutch Assassinations
A Decade of Targeted Killings

//The Moordmakelaar Era

The modern era of Dutch contract killings arguably begins with the rise of the \"moordmakelaar\" - the murder broker. These intermediaries accepted hit orders from senior crime figures and outsourced execution to young, often disposable operatives from disadvantaged neighborhoods in Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam. Payment ranged from a few thousand euros to tens of thousands, depending on the target\u2019s profile, location, and security precautions. By the mid-2010s, a functional market for contract killings had emerged, with brokers coordinating photos of targets, vehicle descriptions, daily routines, and GPS trackers planted on cars.

Intercepted EncroChat and Sky ECC messages later exposed the industrial logistics of this market. Targets were assigned reference numbers, shooters received updates on their movement patterns, and payment was coordinated through hawala and cash drops. Many hits were ordered from Dubai or Morocco by fugitives running operations remotely. Dutch investigators described this to parliament as a \"parallel justice system\" in which organized crime could impose its own consequences on informants and opponents.

//March 2018 - Reduan B.

Reduan B., the innocent brother of crown witness Nabil B., was shot dead on March 29, 2018 in his Amsterdam office, only one week after his brother had become a cooperating witness against Ridouan Taghi. The killing was a message - not only to Nabil B. but to every potential future informant in the Dutch criminal world. It marked the moment that targeting family members of witnesses became normalized practice within the Taghi organization. Three perpetrators were later convicted; the hit order was traced to Taghi himself.

Reduan B.\u2019s murder fundamentally changed Dutch witness protection. The Ministry of Justice was forced to acknowledge that high-profile witnesses could no longer be protected using conventional means, and a more aggressive, expensive protection regime was rolled out for Nabil B., his family, and those advising him. Even these measures, however, would prove inadequate for what came next.

//September 2019 - Derk Wiersum

On September 18, 2019, attorney Derk Wiersum was shot dead in front of his home in Amsterdam\u2019s Buitenveldert district while walking to his car. He was the defense lawyer representing Nabil B. in the Marengo trial. His killing marked a direct assault on the Dutch legal profession: a lawyer, doing his job, was executed in his own street in a quiet residential neighborhood. The Dutch legal community, shaken to the core, demanded immediate action. Security for lawyers handling organized crime cases was tightened across the country, and public attention to the scale of the threat reached a new peak.

Two men were convicted in 2020 for carrying out the hit; the order was traced through EncroChat and Sky ECC messages back to Taghi\u2019s network. Wiersum\u2019s murder is widely credited with catalyzing the Dutch government\u2019s serious commitment to breaking Taghi\u2019s organization - a commitment that led directly to the Dubai arrest three months later.

//July 2021 - Peter R. de Vries

On July 6, 2021, the celebrated investigative journalist Peter R. de Vries was shot five times in central Amsterdam on Lange Leidsedwarsstraat, minutes after leaving the RTL studio where he was a regular guest. De Vries, 64, had spent decades exposing organized crime and unsolved murders, becoming a Dutch institution. In his final years, he had advised Nabil B. and openly criticized the Taghi organization. His death on July 15 after nine days on life support marked a low point in Dutch public life. The murder triggered a night of spontaneous vigils and an outpouring of national grief.

Two men, both from a broker network in Rotterdam, were convicted in 2022 as the immediate perpetrators. The hit order was traced to the Taghi organization through intercepted messages and the testimony of associates. Taghi denied ordering the killing, though Dutch prosecutors assert the contrary. The case is ongoing at appeal. De Vries\u2019s murder marked the first assassination of a prominent journalist in the Netherlands in modern times and drew global attention to the Dutch crisis.

//The Broader Pattern

Beyond these three cases, dozens of other killings punctuated the 2010s and early 2020s. Rival clan members, drug transporters, suspected informants, and family members of targets were all shot, often in broad daylight in busy streets. Places like Amsterdam\u2019s Diamond District, Utrecht Overvecht, and Rotterdam South became temporary execution zones. Some hits succeeded; many were foiled. Others missed their target entirely, killing bystanders or case of mistaken identity - including Hakim Changachi in 2017, an innocent man murdered after being confused with an intended target. That error led directly to the charges against Taghi in the Marengo indictment.

The Dutch police estimate that dozens of assassinations per year through the late 2010s were connected to the cocaine trade, with the Taghi organization responsible for a large share. The broader Mocro Maffia landscape produced still more. In Belgium, the pattern repeated with attacks linked to the Antwerp drug war. Collectively, these killings have forced Western Europe to confront a level of organized crime violence once associated only with Italy, Mexico, and Colombia.

//The Response

Dutch institutional response has been substantial. Witness protection budgets have grown, prison regimes for high-risk detainees have hardened, defense counsel protections have been reinforced, and digital forensic capabilities have expanded. The Marengo verdict in 2024, sentencing Taghi and co-defendants to life, represented a concrete statement that even the most sheltered criminal figures could be reached. Yet the underlying economy - cocaine imports worth billions annually through Rotterdam and Antwerp - remains intact. New generations of operators have emerged. The tactics pioneered during the Taghi era, targeting witnesses and their families, outsourcing to young hitmen, coordinating through encrypted platforms, have spread. Whether the Netherlands has truly passed the peak of this violence, or merely entered a less visible phase, will only be clear in retrospect.