In both sites, officer found stolen police uniforms, bulletproof vests and blue flashing lights. The court heard that the wives and children of the alleged gang’s rivals were also in danger of being targeted and “detained under the most barbaric conditions”. Prosecutors provided the court with an intercepted message from the suspect known as Piet Costa in which he wrote, “There are a few now and I hope I get the chance to torture them”.Ī second man, who is terminally ill and not currently on trial, allegedly wrote: “If they don’t cooperate, right in the knee”.
The court heard that a second site in Rotterdam was the operating base for an “arrest team” whose task was to pick up their intended targets and take them to the site in Wouwse Plantage. Officers also found a freezer large enough to hold more than one person and a mortar mixing tub which was allegedly going to be used for waterboarding victims. In the seventh container was a refashioned dentist’s chair, with straps for tying arms and legs, finger clamps, scalpels, claw hammers, pliers, loppers, pruning shears, gas burners, tie wraps and duct tape. Two years ago, police officers, acting on intercepted messages, discovered seven shipping containers in Wouwse Plantage in Brabant, six of which were allegedly used as cells containing handcuffs and legcuffs.
