The alleged right-hand man of Ridouan Taghi, the man at the centre of one of the Netherlands’ biggest ever gangland murder trials, has been extradited from Colombia, prosecutors have confirned.

Saïd Razzouki is a defendant in the so-called Marengo trial, in which Taghi and 16 others are accused of organising six murders between 2015 and 2017. The killings are said to be part of the ‘Mocro wars’ between rival drug gangs.

Razzouki was arrested in February in the north-western city of Medellin, where he had been hiding in an apartment. On October 27 Colombia’s president, Iván Duque, signed an order for his extradition after a court dismissed his lawyers’ argument that the application had ‘no serious basis’.

Dutch media said the 49-year-old had been taken to the high-security unit in Vught prison, where Taghi and his brother Mohammed R. are also being detained.

Taghi, 43, was deported in December 2019 from Dubai, where he had been living in a private villa with his wife and six children. He and the other defendants are accused of planning 13 murders, six of which were carried out.

Last July investigative journalist Peter R. de Vries died after being shot in the centre of Amsterdam as he left a television studio. Two men are currently on trial for his murder.

De Vries had been representing Nabil B., a key witness in the Marengo case whose lawyer, Derk Wiersum, was killed outside his in Amsterdam home in September 2019.