Inez Weski will remain in jail for thirty days longer. The court in Rotterdam announced this on Thursday afternoon. The former lawyer of Ridouan Taghi has been detained since April 21 for leaking information to and from the mocro mafia leader.
Weski will also be in complete isolation for the next thirty days. Just like the past two weeks, she is not allowed to have any contact with the outside world. The only person she is allowed to speak to is her own lawyer. The Dutch Association of Criminal Lawyers hopes that these restrictions will be lifted as soon as possible.
Weski’s arrest and pre-trial detention ‘understandably leads to many questions and unrest not only within the profession, but also outside it’, the NVSA writes in a statement. ‘At a time when, to our regret, relations between the Public Prosecution Service and the legal profession appear or threaten to harden, the practice urgently needs answers.’
The detention could have been extended by up to 90 days. It is still unclear whether there will be another request for an extension after the thirty-day detention. After a 90-day pretrial detention, a public hearing must take place in court.
Figurehead in isolation
Fellow lawyers have criticized Weski’s treatment in recent days. “A figurehead of the legal profession in isolation, how much further can we go?”, some people said. “Throwing a 68-year-old woman with fragile health into complete limitation. Awful.” However, the Public Prosecution Service considers it necessary that she be in complete isolation. The case is extremely precarious.
A reconstruction showed that Weski has been put under pressure in recent years by the family of the arrested Ridouan Taghi. She had an encrypted phone and at the request of the family brought information to Taghi. According to the Public Prosecution Service, information from Taghi also came out through her.
According to the NVSA, it is not at all certain that Weski is guilty, despite the fact that her pretrial detention has been extended. “We interpret this decision as meaning that the investigation is still ongoing and that nothing can be said at all about guilt or innocence.” The professional association maintains the importance of the presumption of innocence (someone is innocent until proven guilty, ed.) and emphasizes that it hopes for a good outcome for Weski.
Raise the alarm in confidence
A lawyer caught in the clutches of a criminal organization, such as Weski, must be able to sound the alarm in confidence without immediately having to fear disciplinary or criminal action or a professional ban, states the Dutch Bar, which for that reason ‘confidential lawyers ‘ is going to recruit. “Sometimes lawyers end up in a situation that they had not foreseen in advance,” said spokesman Eric Trinthamer.
What is going on?
Weski assisted Ridouan Taghi, main suspect in the Marengo liquidation process, but resigned the defense after her arrest. She is said to have shared information from her former client from the Extra Secure Institution (EBI) in Vught with his contacts in the outside world. It is not yet clear what the consequences of Weski’s arrest will be for the Marengo process.
It is therefore not yet clear who will succeed Weski, but “no one in the legal profession is eager to assist Taghi”, lawyer Bart Swier said to this site earlier. According to him, this has to do with the charged character of Marengo, in which the murders of Peter R. de Vries, Derk Wiersum and the brother of Nabil B. are seen as an inextricable part of the process. “This case stands alone. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
Weski furious
In September last year, during a hearing in the criminal case against Youssef T., former lawyer and cousin of Taghi, T.’s lawyer suggested that Weski would also have acted as a conduit for Taghi. In response, the OM said that “initial investigation made it clear that there is a suspicion that Weski was approached by relatives of Taghi for a communication line, but not that she was involved.”
Weski was furious at these allegations and flatly denied. She called the accusation “false, unjustly suggestive and deeply reprehensible.” Youssef T. was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison in February.
Watch our videos about Ridouan Taghi and the Marengo process below:
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