Two drug kingpins have been killed in Europe, one of whom was to have been a witness in the trial of alleged Dutch crime lord Ridouan Taghi.
Mr Taghi, who was arrested in Dubai in 2019, is facing trial over a number of alleged murders in the Netherlands and has been accused by prosecutors of plotting a violent prison break and ordering killings from his cell.
Bledar Muca, 39, was shot dead outside his apartment in Antwerp, Belgium, on Saturday.
He is believed to have been the right-hand man of two prominent Albanian drug dealers and had been living in London under fake British identity documents until 2020.
The fatal shooting comes a week after the killing of Utrecht drug trafficker Ebrahim Buzhu, 52, who was known as “the butcher”.
He was found with a gunshot wound to the head in a burnt out car in Cadiz, Spain.
Buzhu was believed to be Mr Taghi’s rival and had reported him to the police in 2015.
He was to be an important witness in his trial.
Mr De Vries had been advising the key witness, Nabil Bakkali, a former gang member, in Mr Taghi’s trial when he was killed.
It came after the killing of Mr Bakkali’s lawyer Derk Wiersum in 2019 and his brother Reduan Bakkali in 2018.
