The Amsterdam court has sentenced career criminal Sjaak B. to 8 years in prison for trafficking in heavy weapons and for laundering tens of thousands of euros.
Cell
Amsterdam underworld veteran Sjaak B. (53) receives 8 years in prison for his years of trading in (heavy) firearms and the possession of a large arsenal of weapons including explosives in a ‘stash’ in Rijsenhout. He also laundered almost 67,000 euros. This is reported by the Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool.
The Public Prosecution Service demanded a 10.5-year prison sentence against B. for possession of a large quantity of firearms, firearms trafficking and money laundering.
Not established
Sjaak B.’s co-suspects Hasan I. (37) and Brahim O. (32) receive 3 and 2 years in prison for arms trafficking. O. was sentenced to 8 years, also for drug trafficking, but the court follows the reasoning of his lawyer, Cem Polat, that 648 kilos of ‘blocks’ have not been established as kilos of cocaine, as the justice department states. According to the judges, this cannot be determined solely on the basis of decrypted message traffic, including photos from the downed computer servers of Sky ECC.
Raid
The case revolves around a weapon discovery in a warehouse in Rijsenhout (municipality of Haarlemmermeer). There, during a raid on a business premises, the police encountered a large quantity of firearms, including machine guns, 15 sniper rifles and explosives, such as an anti-personnel mine. A large quantity of ammunition was also found.
In November 2021, the detectives identified Sjaak B. and co-suspects Brahim O. from Diemen and Hasan I. from Amsterdam through messages from cracked PGP telephones from the Sky ECC platform. After extensive research, a warehouse in Rijsenhout was also identified as a location where a batch of firearms may have been stored.
Cocaine laundry
After the major weapons discovery, a further search of an adjacent warehouse revealed an active cocaine laundry containing many chemicals and kilos of cocaine and amphetamine. Following the discovery of the cocaine laundry, a fourth suspect was arrested.
The warehouse also contained all the equipment required for a laundry, such as a so-called block press and chemicals, including barrels of acetone. In a laundry, cocaine is extracted from other materials.
Sjaak B. survived an attempt on his life in Panama in 2016.
He was sentenced to eight years in prison in 1995 for shooting dead a café visitor after an argument in a café in Badhoevedorp. During the Passage Trial he was only convicted of arms trafficking. He was suspected for a while of liquidating Heineken kidnapper Cor van Hout.
