AMSTERDAM - Five suspects in the murder of Peter R. de Vries have been directly linked to Ridouan Taghi, sources close to the investigation told EenVandaag. The drug lord ordered them from prison to assault his ex-brother-in-law in May 2021, according to the program. 

In the verdict against Taghi’s cousin Youssef T., the court established that Ridouan Taghi gave the order to assault his former brother-in-law from the high-security prison in Vught. On 2 May 2021, three men beat him up with a baseball bat. He was attacked again two days later. And in September of that year, there was a failed attempt on his life. 

According to the police, the suspects who committed this assault for Taghi were also involved in Peter R. de Vries’s assassination on 6 July 2021. Taghi’s involvement has long been suspected - De Vries was a confidant to Nabil B., the key witness in the massive Marengo assassinations trial against Taghi and his alleged gang. And Nabil B.’s lawyer and brother were also previously murdered. But this is the first hard link between Taghi and De Vries’s killers, according to EenVandaag. 

According to EenVandaag’s sources, the detectives concluded that the De Vries murder suspects played an important role “in close cooperation and changing composition” in “several attempts to seriously assault or kill Taghi’s ex-brother-in-law.” 

New, decrypted messages and traffic data show that Kamil E., the Polish man suspected of being the getaway driver in De Vries’s assassination, severely assaulted Taghi’s brother-in-law two months before the crime writer’s shooting. Traces of Kamil E.’s DNA was found in the car used for the assault, and his phone pinged on a cell tower near the scene of the crime in Nieuwegein. 

One of the two men accused of filming De Vries’s assassination and posting it on social media, Erickson O., was also in Nieuwegein at the time. And Dviainy K., the ninth suspect in the De Vries murder arrested in April, sent O. instructions during the assault. “It is best to hit on the head with a pistol then fire a shot in the knee, hand, and elbow at close range,” according to a screenshot K. forwarded to Erickson O. 

The police also linked Krystian M. - accused of hiring Delano G. to gun down De Vries - to another attempt to assault and possibly kill the ex-brother-in-law. Another of Taghi’s cousins, Jaouad F., was also allegedly involved in that attempt in Lopik in September 2021. The ex-brother-in-law escaped that attempt unharmed.