Ridouan Taghi

Ridouan Taghi (born 20 December 1977) is a convicted Moroccan-Dutch criminal who became a prime suspect in at least ten murders related to organised crime, drug trafficking and leading a criminal organisation.

On February 27, 2024, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Taghi was born in 1977 in the north of Morocco.

In 1980 he moved to Vianen in the Netherlands with his parents, his older brother and two sisters.

While in the Netherlands, another six sisters and one brother were born.

In the early 1990s he joined the youth gang Bad Boys.

The Bad Boys were active in the Amsterdamsestraatweg in Utrecht and the mall Cityplaza in Nieuwegein.

In 1992, Taghi was first sentenced for among other things burglaries and possession of weapons.

At age 17, Taghi quit his vwo-education in Nieuwegein.

For a while he ran a grillroom in the Amsterdamsestraatweg in Utrecht.

In 2009, he deregistered from the Dutch population administration.

Despite earlier convictions, Taghi remained out of the police's sight.

Buzhu claimed he was on Taghi's hitlist after he helped abducting a coffeeshop owner in 2009, with whom Taghi was friends.

Buzhu was found dead near Cadiz in January 2022.

The first time again was in 2013, when the Spanish police linked him to the assassination of Mohammed Abdellaoui the same year.

At that time, he was also seen as a major cocaine dealer.

Starting in 2013, the Team Criminal Intelligence and Financial Intelligence Unit from the Dutch police received tips about Taghi.

On 20 January 2014, there was an attempt to kill criminal Samir Jabli in Amersfoort, but this failed.

Instead, a student was killed.

On 1 December 2014 another attempt was successful and killed Jabli.

Witness Nabil B. has alleged that Taghi was involved in this murder, but the Prosecution left it out of the trial due to lack of evidence.

In August 2021, de Telegraaf reported that the police found Taghi's DNA on bullets used in Jabli's assassination.

The tipping point was when in June 2015 drug trafficker Ebrahim Buzhu reported Taghi and his suspected right hand man Saïd Razzouki to the Dutch police.

According to the Prosecution, Taghi ordered the assassination of spyshop employee Ronald Bakker in September 2015 in Huizen.

Bakker was ordered by the police to hand over information about his clients, which included Taghi's organisation.

The Prosecution assumed this is why Taghi ordered the assassination.

There were also plans to shoot the spyshop with a bazooka, but the suspects were arrested beforehand.

Abderrahim Belhadj was killed on 9 May 2016.

According to the Prosecution, Taghi ordered this because Belhadj had stolen two blocks of cocaine.

On 22 June 2016, criminal Samir Erraghib was assassinated in IJsselstein.

According to the Prosecution, Taghi ordered this assassination because Erraghib had talked about him to the police.

According to the Prosecution, Taghi and Razzouki went looking for Buzhu after he had delivered incriminating statements to the police.

When they could not find Buzhu, they targeted a friend of Buzhu, Ranko Scekic.

Scekic was killed on 22 June 2016, a few days before he was scheduled to be heard as a witness in a criminal case against Taghi's organisation.

In June 2016, former criminal turned crimeblogger Martin Kok published on his website Vlinderscrime about two henchmen of Taghi.

According to the Prosecution, this made him a target of Taghi.

The first attempt was in July 2016, when they had placed a bomb under his car.

This failed, because Kok found the bomb before detonation.

Until his late 2019 arrest in Dubai, Taghi was the most wanted criminal in the Netherlands with a record-breaking reward of €100,000.

In 2022 he was held at Nieuw Vosseveld, a maximum security prison in Vught and the main suspect in the Marengo trial.