Ridouan Taghi is said to have spoken “veiled” and in “coded language” with his family several times during a visit to the extra-secure facility (ebi) in Vught. The same applied to telephone conversations with his loved ones, concluded the Detainees Recherche-Informatie Punt (GRIP) in a report of May 2022.
The result of this report is that Taghi was not allowed to call his mother and sister for a while. The number of visitors he was allowed to receive was also adjusted by the director of the ebi.
Taghi’s communication with the outside world is a very sensitive subject. The police and judiciary strongly suspect that Taghi is still doing everything possible to manage his alleged criminal organization.
Youssef Taghi was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison at the beginning of this year because, as a lawyer, he acted as a conduit for his cousin Ridouan Taghi. The same suspicion that there is now against Inez Weski, Ridouan Taghi’s former lawyer.
The communication referred to in the report dates from 2022, six months after the arrest of Youssef Taghi.
Pattern of obfuscated messages and code language
The conclusions of the GRIP, part of the National Police Unit, can be read in judgments of the Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Youth Protection (RSJ). Taghi had appealed to the RSJ against the restrictions on his contacts because, according to him, there was no veiled communication.
GRIP came to a completely different conclusion than Taghi. There would be a pattern of telephone conversations and visits in which veiled messages and code language are used.
The ebi is the most highly secured prison in the Netherlands, but suspects do have the right to contact their loved ones. This is always checked and you can only talk to people who have been approved in advance.
According to GRIP, this control was made more difficult by whispering or speaking loudly in conversations with Taghi during the visit. It would also be spoken interchangeably or in a different language. Taghi denies this and wanted to listen back to the tape recordings of these conversations to demonstrate that this was not correct.
That request was rejected by the RSJ. The decision that Taghi is no longer allowed to receive three people at the same time was upheld. This was adjusted to one visitor at a time and three in total per visiting hour.
Unauthorized contact with cousin who is incarcerated
GRIP was also very concerned about telephone conversations conducted by Taghi. There would even have been forbidden contact between Taghi and his cousin who is detained in a prison in Morocco.
The conversation took place on April 29 last year. Taghi was in contact with his mother who was in the same room as Taghi’s sister. This sister was in contact with her son, Taghi’s cousin. Taghi himself says not to have exchanged a single word with his cousin about this, but only to have said hello to him.
According to the director, this contact was unauthorized and Taghi was banned from calling as a signal that this behavior is not allowed. The RSJ has assessed all restrictions as reasonable and maintained them.
2023-05-09 20:56:29
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