Samenvatting

More than twenty criminals from Amsterdam were killed since 2012 in fierce conflicts in the criminal scene. The victims, mostly young men, can be divided into four categories. The assassins are young, often with a low intelligence, and easy to contract. They hope to give their criminal career a boost by killing. Their main motives are status and money. If the organization fears that they know too much and might inform the police, this can be a motive to kill them. Sometimes fear of betrayal of the organization is a motive for murder. The middlemen are important, because the ‘high profile targets’ want to stay out of sight of the assassins. The middlemen already have a rather secure position, although subordinate to the top. The motive to have them killed is often distrust and the fear that they know too much and would be able to tell the police too much. Revenge by another group is also an important reason they get killed. The high profile targets are top criminals in their thirties or forties mostly and in charge of the drug trafficking. The motive to have them killed is to gain influence and obtain a stronger, strategic position in the market, or – again – revenge. Rivals who are afraid to be killed, sometimes choose to be the first to act. The final category is formed by the victims killed by mistake. Recently at least three people were killed by assassins who thought they were shooting at a criminal target in the conflict. Just by mistake, because the victim drove the same kind of car, for example.