Holland is known in Finland and elsewhere in Europe as an increasingly popular study country.
Number of Finnish students in the country quadrupled in the last decade. At the same time, international drug gangs have moved to Holland.
Drug gangs are known to not cause problems for ordinary students, but they changed one student’s life.
Crown Princess of the Netherlands Amalia moved to Amsterdam in the fall to start his university studies. The goal was to live as normal a student life as possible.
Along with studying psychology, law, politics and economics, there would be partying, organization life and the creation of friendships in a new city. The coming of age of an ordinary 19-year-old, that is.
The dream did not come true. Last September, the Dutch media told, that the criminal gangs had planned to kidnap Amalia. It was time to return to the parents in The Hague and life under the round-the-clock protection of the authorities. Amalia couldn’t even go for a walk.
The concern for Amalia’s safety is not exaggerated. In recent years, drug gangs have resorted to unprecedentedly drastic means in Holland to increase their influence.
Amalia’s being placed in round-the-clock protection is just one of many cases that have shocked the Netherlands.
With drug money comes violence
Alarming signs began in the last decade, when underworld showdowns became more common. Murders were still carried out more carelessly and with less justification.
2017 was the bloodiest year. A total of 38 underworld murders were recorded. The following year, the country’s police union warned that Holland was becoming a narco-state, i.e. a drug society.
In itself, drug crime was not a new phenomenon in the Netherlands. The country has been known for decades as a transit country for drugs and a producer of synthetic drugs.
However, two significant changes took place in the 2010s, a professor at the University of Utrecht who studied organized crime Dina Siegel tells .
Firstly, new, more international actors emerged in the criminal world. These included Eastern European gangs and, above all, the so-called Moccro Mafia, the majority of whose members are of Moroccan background.
– The new generation of criminals has resorted more sensitively to violence instead of coming to terms, says Siegel.
Second, more and more cocaine began to flow throughout Europe, and the majority of it came through Holland. Drug flows worth billions gave birth to a violent struggle for new markets.
An attack on the rule of law
Now the leader of the Moccro Mafia Ridouan Taghi and 16 other members of the criminal organization are accused of multiple murders in the huge Marengo trial.
However, the trial has been overshadowed by shocking events. Key witness Nabil B‘s brother and his lawyer Derk Wiersum was murdered in 2019.
In the summer of 2021, Holland’s best-known crime reporter Peter R. de Vries shot in the middle of the day in the center of Amsterdam. De Vries had acted as Nabil B’s advisor.
The murders were direct attacks on the basic pillars of the rule of law, independent courts and free media. They reminded the Dutch of Italy’s famous mafia trials from the 1990s and of investigative judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino murders.
Now Holland is looking to learn from Italy.
It was published a couple of weeks ago research, according to which the Netherlands could take a model from Italy, above all in the protection of key witnesses. In Italy, state protection is offered significantly more often.
The Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security has made several study trips to Italy in recent years. Current Minister of Justice Dilan Yesilgöz told last year to the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad that he was impressed by Italy’s fight against crime.
– It is a holistic approach. Anyone who does something to a criminal organization, even by accident, can be punished, Yesilgöz said.
In the Netherlands, the prosecutor’s office and the police have been strongly criticized for the murders of de Vries and Wiersum. In January the published report according to him, the murders could have been prevented if the flow of information between the authorities had worked better.
Holland is not Italy
Utrecht University professor Dina Siegel doesn’t warm to Italy comparisons.
Although the murders of De Vries and Wiersum are shocking, the scale is completely different than in Italy, Siegel points out.
– Journalists and politicians were indiscriminately murdered in Italy in the 1980s. Bystander restaurateurs and shopkeepers were shot in the streets. This has not happened in the Netherlands.
According to Siegel, an even more important difference is that criminal organizations have not infiltrated the institutions of Dutch society like the Italian mafia or Latin American drug gangs.
In Italy, the main problem was the extortion of protection money and corruption. In the Netherlands, it is the international drug trade. These have to be answered in different ways, Siegel states.
When criminals operate internationally, it is also necessary to act against them internationally, the researcher emphasizes.
– That’s why talking about the Netherlands as a separate drug society from the rest of Europe is harmful.
Not all crime can be prevented
According to Siegel, the image of Holland as a hangout for drug gangs is partly based on old stereotypes.
Due to the country’s liberal legislation, many people think that you can do anything in the Netherlands. That is not true. The penalties for selling hard drugs are quite strict internationally, says Siegel.
Siegel also defends liberal Dutch legislation. He points out that, for example, the legalization of mild drugs is a way to take the market away from criminals and free up the police’s resources to solve more important problems.
Of course, the fight against violent crime must be continued, but it is naive to think that it can be completely stopped, says Siegel.
As long as it is possible to make huge sums of money with drugs, the drug trade will attract new criminals.
– Drug crime is like a monster. If you cut off its head, two or three new heads will grow in its place.
When Holland tightened its border controls, cocaine and drug gang violence spread to Antwerp on the Belgian side.
At the same time, Crown Princess Amalia’s life in special protection is known to continue.