It appears that Khalid Kasem acted as a carrier pigeon for top criminal Ridouan Taghi, with whom he went to school. “There is little chance that he will ever be on TV again.”
It is after a controversial lawsuit second AD article based on the leaked Peter R. de Vries tapes has finally been published. The big news from this article? Khalid Kasem admits on the tapes that he has indeed had contact with his former childhood friend Ridouan Taghi more recently than about twenty years ago, as he previously claimed.
Contact Taghi
In 2021, at the table with Eva Jinek, Khalid pretended that he had not heard from Taghi for a very long time: “That would have been about fifteen or twenty years ago. Somewhere in passing once. That was quite a long time ago. Then you have a conversation like: ‘How are you doing?’ It wouldn’t have been more than that.”
Very strange, because at the end of 2019 he admits to Peter that he had recently had contact with Taghi, as the AD hears on the audio tapes: “Yes, when they came to me, when that happened with you… That was actually the first time I don’t know how many years I have had direct contact with Taghi. For the rest, not really.”
Proud Peter
The AD writes: “Kasem is probably looking back on an incident from earlier that year (in May 2019), when Peter R. de Vries announced via Twitter that he had received information showing that he was on Taghi’s death list. At that time, Taghi was still on the run and staying in Dubai.”
A few days later, Peter almost proudly told all kinds of talk show tables that he had a letter had received from Taghi. It said, among other things: “I have no reason to do anything to you. (…) As a boy I was always very interested in watching your TV programme. I respect you and see you as a professional journalist.”
Peter was murdered in 2021 and experts suspect that this is related to the Taghi case.
Carrier pigeon
How Peter got that letter from Taghi? He never wanted to say that. At the time, at Jeroen Pauw’s talk show table, he said he was sure that the message came from the top criminal: “100,000 percent. There can be no misunderstanding about that. This is definitely from Ridouan Taghi.”
Jeroen now understands that certainty, he says in the Sophie & Jeroen from last night. Khalid appears to have been Taghi’s carrier pigeon. “Presumably – and I will now follow the line of the AD – Peter is 100,000 percent convinced of this, because it now actually appears that Khalid made that contact or spoke to Taghi.”
‘That has to be’
Wilfred Genee also thinks that Khalid was Taghi’s carrier pigeon, he says Today Inside. “It seems that it must have come in via Kasem. You get the impression of that from this story.”
Luuk Ikink, former colleague of Peter, chimes in RTL Boulevard: “We never actually knew where that note came from. Peter never wanted to tell that either. But now it appears from this article that it is very likely through Khalid Kasem who spoke to Taghi.”
Colleague Clarice Stenger, a criminal lawyer: “He apparently had contact with Taghi about this.”
‘He lied’
Tooske Ragas emphasizes in Show news that Khalid was not honest about his last moment of contact with Taghi. “He did lie.”
Colleague Bram Moszkowicz: “Yes, he has.”
Expert Iris van Lunenburg: “I am also curious how colleagues at BNNVARA view this. Whether he was honest with them.”
Will Khalid ever return to TV? “I don’t see it happening so quickly,” says Story boss Guido den Aantrekker.
And Angela de Jong in the AD Media podcast: “Impossible.”