The court of Amsterdam has six gang members convicted for attempted murder and planning seven assassinations. High sentences were handed out to three suspects who coordinated the planned murders: a 33-year-old suspect received eighteen years in prison, two of his co-conspirators aged 36 and 38 received twelve and ten years in prison.
In the attempted murder, the gang detonated a bomb under a scooter, injuring two. There was no actual assassination attempt at the other targets. The gang members did do a lot of preparatory work, such as recruiting and negotiating with ‘hitters’ (hitters) in prison and giving murder orders. More than thirty automatic firearms were found in one of the six convicts, a 32-year-old man, which he provided to the gang. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison.
The evidence against the gang members mainly consisted of encrypted messages that the judicial authorities managed to access. How that was achieved is not clear. The Public Prosecution Service was able to link the messages in which the murders were planned to the six convicts.
For three suspects this did not work, or not sufficiently. They went free. One of them, a 44-year-old man, sent a photo of one of the targets. The Public Prosecution Service could not prove that the photo had to play a role in the intended liquidation.