The public prosecution department is planning to take top lawyer Inez Weski, the former counsel for gangland boss Ridouan Taghi, to court for membership of a criminal organisation, the department’s chief Janneke de Smet has told current affairs show Nieuwsuur.

The allegations against Weski first surfaced last April when she was arrested and held in custody for six weeks.

The prosecution wanted to bring the case against her to court as early as last year, De Smet said. “All kinds of formal defence arguments are being put forward by Ms Weski’s defence team and that means we cannot go to trial yet,” she told the programme.

The department suspects Weski of leaking information from Taghi, who was being held in solitary confinement at the Vught high-security prison at the time, and was only allowed contact with his lawyer.

After she was released from jail last June, Weski’s own lawyers issued a short statement saying that she had not given a statement to the police during questioning because she is bound by the legal system’s confidentiality agreement. Nor will she do so in the future, the lawyers said.

Taghi was jailed for life at the end of a long investigation for his role in six murders and four attempted killings on Tuesday. 

Weski is not the first of Taghi’s lawyers to face charges. At the beginning of last year, his nephew Youssef Taghi was jailed for 5.5 years for passing on information from Taghi while he was in custody.