For the first time, the Dutch police have established a direct link between a contract killing and drug lord Ridouan Taghi.
The newspaper De Telegraaf reported with reference to confidential investigation documents.
Accordingly, the investigators found Taghi's DNA on a cartridge case that had been secured after an attack in Amersfoort at the end of 2014.
At the time, 38-year-old Samir Jabli was shot dead by strangers.
It is said to have been an act of revenge in the milieu for stealing blocks of cocaine.
Thomas Gutschker
Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.
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Several leads point to the Taghis gang, who is on trial with other defendants for other attempted and committed contract killings.
The drug lord from Morocco is also suspected of being behind the murders of a brother of the key witness in this case and his advisor, the journalist Peter R. de Vries.
The key witness Nabil B. had testified to the police that Taghi was also behind the attack in Amersfoort.
The defendant's attorney, Inez Weski, told the newspaper that the forensic value of this material remains to be investigated. In any case, it is clear that such traces say “nothing about their origin or the point in time” at which they were created. Taghi was questioned about the case in mid-July but declined to comment on the DNA trace on the cartridge case. The investigators had already provided evidence in August of last year, but did not make it public. Another man, 22-year-old Mohammed Alarasi, was shot dead in Amersfoort in January 2014. He was killed by mistake. The police also attribute this act to Taghi's gang.