It simply cannot be true that Ridouan Taghi and star witness Nabil B. regularly met in Utrecht shisha lounges. This was argued by lawyer Inez Weski on Friday during a pre-trial hearing in the Marengo liquidation process. She presented a (selective) timeline of Taghi, which also gives more substance to his past.
According to Nabil B., he met Taghi in 2006 in a lounge in Utrecht. “Sometimes he came every day for three months, sometimes he didn’t come for a while. After that a bond was formed, because you had a social contact. At one point, Taghi offered me his number,” he stated earlier during a hearing. According to the crown witness, Taghi even had his own corner in the establishment. He was the only one allowed to smoke inside. There was then a smoking ban in the catering industry.” Taghi has always denied knowing Nabil B. personally, saying that he never met him.
To substantiate this statement, Weski presented a timeline to the court and to the Public Prosecution Service on Friday morning. She hopes that the Public Prosecution Service will investigate that timeline and request flight data, for example, in order to confirm a few things. “Then it can also become clear that what the key witness said about these meetings cannot be true.”
Suspect in Spanish criminal case and seriously ill
The timeline shows that Taghi, the main suspect in the immense liquidation process of Marengo, became a suspect in Spain in 2004 in a criminal case. He allegedly stabbed an Interpol agent. This suspicion led to Taghi being spotted in Spain at least and could be arrested there. “That case ran from 2004 to 2009. That is why my client did not travel to Spain during that period.” He did fly to the Netherlands in 2006, from Morocco, for the birth of one of his children. Immediately after the birth, the family would have flown back to Morocco.
Also in 2007 Taghi briefly stayed in the Netherlands, again because of the birth of a child. Once he arrived at Schiphol, it turned out that he had become seriously ill and had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital in Nieuwegein. Weski: ,,He stayed there for two to three weeks. The client then left the hospital against the advice of the doctors and immediately traveled back to Morocco with his family to rehabilitate there. Another reason for the quick return was that the Spanish procedure was still ongoing and it was not clear at that time whether or not he had been spotted.” According to Weski, the Public Prosecution Service can easily request that medical data to check things.
Embassy employees visit Taghi in Morocco
In 2008 Taghi mainly stayed in Morocco, namely in Casablanca. “At the time, two employees of the Dutch embassy in Morocco came by with the announcement that the child benefit had to be repaid because the client and his family had actually already moved. That money was also neatly refunded at the time,” said Weski. “And that is also by requesting the Public Prosecution Service.” In 2010 and 2011, he would have been in the Netherlands for a few weeks.
In 2012, he spent another three weeks in the Netherlands, after which he flew to Cuba for three weeks. After that, he was twice three weeks in Brazil and the Dominican Republic. In June 2012, Taghi again becomes involved in a Spanish criminal case when drug trafficker Tarik Abdellaoui is shot in Marbella. Taghi is seen as a suspect by the Spanish police and is again spotted. ,,The client then immediately traveled back to Morocco with his family in June by car. The client has therefore no longer been to the Netherlands.”
OM: Impossible to request flight data
The Public Prosecution Service stated that it is impossible to request flight data from more than ten years ago. Moreover, according to the prosecutors, it is also not the case that if ‘Weski’s timeline’ were correct, the meetings recalled by the crown witness did not take place. “It is the statement of Nabil B. against that of Taghi.”
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