“If only I hadn’t done it all. I think you know. I know what was planned. If only I had let it all happen… I’m dying now. I’m not going to survive this. You know I didn’t want it.”
This was the first reaction that lawyer Inez Weski expressed on April 21, 2023 to investigating officers and a prosecutor who had just informed her in her home that she had been arrested on suspicion of membership of Ridouan Taghi’s criminal organization. It was the opening of the indictment of public prosecutor Jirko Patist on Thursday in the Rotterdam court. For the first time in this case, substantive discussions were held about the evidence that the justice department says it has collected against the now 71-year-old Weski.
The prosecutor said that the evidence against Weski “is largely based on the results of the interception of PGP data from the investigation into the provider Sky-Ecc.” Criminals have believed themselves unobserved for years by using telephones with encrypted communications. Until the judiciary cracked this message traffic. It is a gold mine for investigation.
The Public Prosecution Service says it can prove that Weski received a special device for encrypted communication from his sister Nora, shortly after gang leader Ridouan Taghi was brought from Dubai to the Netherlands in December 2019. Weski’s account was named UPI. “In PGP conversations with Faissal Taghi [de in Dubai wonende oudste zoon van Ridouan] the user of the UPI account indicated on May 30, 2020 that she will visit him again on Tuesday in the morning and her sister in the afternoon. The visitor lists of the EBI show that on Tuesday, June 2, Inez Weski in the morning and her sister Miriam Weski in the afternoon visited Ridouan Taghi,” said Patist.
Inez Weski only partially attended the hearing.
Photo ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN / ANP
Instructions in detail
According to the Public Prosecution Service, the intercepted messages that prosecutors discussed in the prosecution show that Weski passed on detailed instructions about drug transports. Accounting was also discussed. Weski not only passes on messages about payments that an Italian gang member has to make to Ridouan Taghi (22 million dollars), but also about payments that that gang member has to make to her, Weski, in connection with her work as a lawyer for Ridouan Taghi, according to the Public Prosecution Service. “Weski herself also requests multiple payments of her invoices through Faissal Taghi and complains about the slow payment of a gang member, indicating that she is afraid of being left empty-handed: ‘and soon nothing’.” said Patist.
After it became known in June 2020 that the investigative services could read Encrochat’s encrypted communications, Weski stopped using her encrypted telephone and the SkyECC application, according to the Public Prosecution Service. “The exchange of messages with Ridouan then takes place via password-protected USB sticks.” According to the Public Prosecution Service, the initiative to work with USB sticks and passwords appears to have come from Weski.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, the file shows that Weski was very aware of the fact that she participated in drug trafficking. “She played a crucial role.” For this reason, the Public Prosecution Service is demanding an unconditional prison sentence of four years and six months against the woman who was a lawyer for 45 years.
Not in the suspect box
Inez Weski only partially attended the hearing. And she did not sit in the suspects’ bench but at a table between the four counselors who assisted her. At the end of the morning, the stress became too much for her and she sneaked out of the room. Weski is a heart patient, suffers from diabetes and the detention has increased her symptoms. “Since the detention I have suffered potentially fatal damage,” Weski said. She described to the court the past three years of her prosecution as “an unbearable period.” She says she lives “in a ring of fire that is increasingly stoked. You think you can extinguish everything. But that is an illusion,” Weski said. She wept.
Weski did not sit in the suspects’ bench but at a table between the four counselors who assisted her.
Photo ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN / ANP
Weski skipped the indictment. She started the session in the morning by issuing a kind of disclaimer. She said that she “would like to explain my legal position very briefly. I would like to formally tell you that I am invoking my confidentiality obligations.” According to Weski, everything that clients discuss with her as a lawyer falls under her professional secrecy.
This does not mean that Weski attended parts of her criminal trial completely silently. She regularly protested when, in her opinion, the presiding judge did not correctly represent facts from the file. One of her lawyers gave a presentation of exculpatory messages that members of Taghi’s gang exchanged with each other. According to her, this shows that Ridouan Taghi’s accomplices frequently complained about Weski because she was difficult to reach and did not properly carry out the assignments she was given.
The chairman of the court also told something about the threats that Weski allegedly suffered. The lawyer is said to have said to a prosecutor that morning of April 21, 2023: “You should know what I have stopped.”
Weski’s lawyers will make their plea next week. That will reportedly take two days.
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After 45 years of legal practice, Inez Weski begins the criminal case of her life
