The Netherlands has become a mafia paradise due to an excessive drug policy, thinks Der Spiegel. The German weekly dedicates a remarkable cover story to the neighboring country.
After the Italian journalist and writer Roberto Saviano previously pilloried the Netherlands as a hypocritical narco-state and ‘one of the most criminal countries in the world’, the German magazine of the mirror from leather. In a nine-page cover story’Kase, Koks und Killer‘ (cheese, coke and murderers) gives a state of affairs of recent developments, including the murder of Peter R. de Vries, and sweeps the floor with the Dutch drug policy that German authorities are increasingly concerned about.
‘A country that has surrendered itself to drugs’, says of the mirror that this time puts a criminal Frau Antje on the cover. A few decades ago, the popular Dutch cheese girl was depicted high and drinking beer. Now she poses defiantly with a Kalashnikov and cocaine, hidden in a Gouda cheese.
The concerns are great in Germany, the story shows. The Bundeskriminalamt in Wiesbaden (the German national criminal investigation department) handled 161 cases in 2019, all of which pointed to the Netherlands. Much more than any other country. This confirms the status of the Netherlands as an important support center for the international drug trade and as a hub for the trade in Europe, according to German researchers. ‘The Netherlands is a country that wants to be free, but that has fallen into the clutches of the mocromafia due to naive policy’, according to the magazine.
Who talks, who goes
of the mirror explains to her readers that there is a culture of fear for drug gangsters in the Netherlands and that Prime Minister Rutte is no longer sure of his life. ‘Who talks, goes’ is said to be the motto of the Taghi gang. The fear is there, according to the magazine, ‘because every journalist who writes about the Moroccan gangs, every prosecutor, every lawyer, every witness should better look under his car to make sure there isn’t a bomb there’. They all have to see who is walking behind them, be prepared to put themselves under police protection and give up the old life’. “The Netherlands is the drug supermarket of Europe,” says Frank Buckenhof, trade union leader of the customs officers in Essen. The professionals for importing, growing, manufacturing and distributing drugs are all based in the Netherlands, according to him.
The article coincides with a discussion in Germany about a possible liberalization of German drug policy. The forthcoming coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals is discussing a possible legalization of the sale of soft drugs. Several speakers say that the dangerous influences of the Dutch drug criminals would already be noticeable in Germany.
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