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The Cartel, the journalist and the gang-land killings that rocked the Netherlands by Jessica

Loudis.

Towards the end of 2016, four years before one of the Netherlands' best-known journalists

was fatally shot in the middle of Amsterdam. A 30-year-old man named Narbil B was about to upend his life forever.

Narbil was one of five children born to Moroccan parents who emigrated to the Netherlands in the 1970s

and settled in Utrecht, a medieval city in the centre of the country.

While his siblings all went on to become entrepreneurs and successful business people,

Narbil struggled academically.

After finishing a metalworking degree, he started selling weed and dabbling in small-time crime.

He was a young man who wanted a lot, his best friend from that time later told police,

he had big stories, he loved money.

One night in 2006, Narbil says he met a man named Riddewan Taki at a local Shisha lounge.

Taki was 29, about 10 years older than Narbil, but the two shared a fondness for

chess and family connections to Chef Schauen, a 15th century Moroccan city whose blue buildings

are said to provide divine protection. At the time, Taki was living between Dubai and Morocco and

making a fortune smuggling hash across the strait of Gibraltar and into the coffee shops of Amsterdam

and Utrecht. Over the next few years, Taki, whose nickname was Kleiner or Tiny,

...