The two men responsible for the murder of lawyer Derk Wiersum in 2019 were sentenced to thirty years in prison by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal on Thursday. The court has already imposed the same sentence on the two executors.
As a result, the sentence was again lower than the Public Prosecution Service (OM) previously demanded. He wanted the two, Moreno B. (34) and Giermo B. (39, no relation) to receive a life sentence.
Derk Wiersum (44) was shot dead on September 18, 2019 at his home in Amsterdam-Buitenveldert. He was one of the lawyers of Nabil B., the key witness in the controversial Marengo liquidation process, in which Ridouan Taghi is the main suspect. Suspect Giermo B. (39) was arrested that same month, Moreno B. (33) was arrested in January 2020. Both have denied from the outset that they are responsible for the murder.
Numerous preliminary investigations preceded the crime, the court concluded. First by so-called spotters, then by the two perpetrators. They would have driven through the residential area of Wiersum several times with stolen cars. In the end, the lawyer was shot when he got into his car to go to work at around 7:30 am.
It was not certain for the court that the perpetrators knew exactly who Wiersum was and that he assisted the key witness. Both men did know that Wiersum was a lawyer, says the court. “It must have been clear to them that a murder of a lawyer would cause a great social shock.”
Private life on the street
According to their lawyers, the evidence relied in part on mapped telephone traffic of the suspects. According to the lawyers, this did not go according to the rules and the judge should disregard the results. In addition, when collecting the data, the private lives of the two men are ‘out in the open’. For example, it became clear that both had a mistress.
According to the lawyers, the fact that the Public Prosecution Service previously demanded a life sentence was not well substantiated. Such as the statement that the murder of Wiersum was ‘an attack on the rule of law’, because the victim was a lawyer. The lawyers also agree that the murder of a lawyer is a very exceptional and shocking event. But the fact that the victim is a lawyer should not lead to extra punishment, they believe. “Every life is worth the same.”
Series of liquidations
The murder of Derk Wiersum is part of a series of liquidations of people close to key witness Nabil B. His brother Reduan was murdered in March 2018. In July 2021, the attack on Peter R. de Vries, at that time Nabil B.’s confidant, followed.
In the run-up to the murders, a lot went wrong with the security of the victims. Signals that they were in danger were not properly appreciated by the authorities. In a disconcerting reconstruction, the Dutch Safety Board sketched how crucial information always got stuck in bureaucracy.
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