The well-known Dutch criminal Henk Rommy has to answer for a double murder in May 1993 from Monday. Rommy, also called the “Black Cobra”, is suspected of having ordered the liquidation in Antwerp. Why did this case take so long?
At the beginning of 2021 he set foot on Dutch soil again. Rommy landed at Schiphol after serving a sixteen-year sentence in the United States. In 2006 he was found guilty of intending to smuggle ecstasy pills into America.
Shortly after his landing, he was arrested because he still had to serve a 14-month sentence for smuggling hashish. Rommy had grown up through the trade in soft drugs.
While in his cell, he was told he was being prosecuted for a double murder in Antwerp. A liquidation that was part of the long-drawn-out Passage process in which Dino Soerel was also on trial and Willem Holleeder’s name was regularly mentioned.
Prosecution of Rommy already announced in 2012
Sabine Tammes, one of the prosecutors in that trial, already announced when pronouncing the criminal demands in 2012 that Rommy would still “get his turn”. Rommy, who was born in Suriname, is said to have been the client for the murder of the Greek diamond merchant and drug trafficker Henie Shamel (55).
Rommy would have a debt of almost two million guilders with Shamel and decided that it was cheaper to kill the man than to pay off his debt.
When Shamel arrived in his yellow Mercedes on the night of May 8 to 9, he was fired upon. Next to him was his girlfriend Anne de Witte (44). It was later concluded that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Crown witness Peter la Serpe, among others, spoke about the background of the double murder and the involvement of contract killer Jesse R. According to La Serpe, it was R. who told him that Rommy had given the order. An accusation that is contradicted by Rommy.
Black Cobra owes nickname to burglar career
The fact that Rommy’s guilt or innocence is only now being judged has everything to do with his prison sentence in America. In 2004 he was arrested in Spain after an undercover operation set up by the Americans.
Rommy took his first steps on the criminal path as a burglar and earned his nickname Black Cobra. He said he was so flexible that he could fit through any keyhole and the reference to a snake was born. After being involved in art theft, among other things, he turned to the hashish trade.
At his wedding in 1993, Rommy showed how well he was doing. On video you can see that René Froger performed on the island rented by Rommy in the Loosdrecht lakes. Presenter Caroline Tensen talked the party together. Some guests jokingly walked around with the letters DEA on their backs, referring to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s anti-narcotics squad.
America arrested Rommy outside the Netherlands
It was this service that arrested Rommy ten years later in Spain. A Dutch civilian infiltrator and an American undercover agent had spoken with Rommy about smuggling a batch of ecstasy pills to America.
When Rommy said he knew someone who could help with that, that was enough for his arrest. A decision that was fiercely challenged by his lawyer Mark Teurlings, who still represents Rommy.
His client is said to have been provoked by the Americans and that is prohibited in the Netherlands. Officers are not allowed to incite someone to commit a crime. According to Teurlings, this was the reason why the Dutch government was kept out of the American plans, to prevent the arrest from being unlawful.
Attorney General Hirsch Ballin later admitted that the Americans had asked for help, but it was turned down. Despite the rejection, the Americans continued their operation. In 2005 he was extradited to the United States, in 2008 he was finally sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Teurling’s attempts to let Rommy at least serve his sentence in the Netherlands failed. After a four-year sentence reduction, Rommy is now back for just over a year.
Little is left of the Black Cobra, says Teurlings. 71-year-old Rommy is struggling with health problems and partly for this reason he was temporarily released in June of last year pending trial.
The trial will start on Monday in which the defense will argue that not Rommy, but another criminal who died in 2020, is behind the double murder in Antwerp.
