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The Hague, Netherlands — A Dutch court on Friday jailed one man for life and another for nearly 30 years for shooting dead a teenager in a case of mistaken identity that raised fears over gang violence in the Netherlands.
Victim Mohamed Bouchikhi, 17, was giving children a cookery lesson at an Amsterdam community center when masked gunmen opened fire with an automatic rifle and a pistol in January 2018.
The suspects, identified in Dutch media as Emylio G., 30, and Randall D., 41, had gone there intending to kill another man, after what one witness said was a fight a few days earlier at the center.
Amsterdam district court convicted both men of murder, handing Emylio G. a life prison term and sentencing Randall D. to 29 years and six months.
“Their actions show an unprecedented cold-bloodedness and ruthlessness,” judges said, adding that they showed “professional planning”.
“A life sentence should only be imposed in exceptional cases,” the judges said.
The victim’s family were “irreparably broken”, they added.
More than 1,000 people packed an Amsterdam mosque for the funeral of the teenager, who was known for his volunteer work. Bouchikhi’s body was buried in Morocco, where he had family roots.
The court said the suspects had burst through the doors of the centre in the working-class Wittenburg neighbourhood and unleashed a “hail of bullets”.
They seriously injured two adults including their intended victim, named in reports as Gianni L.
But they then shot and killed Bouchikhi, who was trying to hide when they fired several shots into his back “as he lay defenceless on his stomach on the floor”.
“It has been established that (Bouchikhi) was mistaken for the intended target”, said the judges, adding that it “does not change” the suspects’ guilt.
They were convicted on evidence including DNA found on a cap near a burnt-out getaway car and intercepted phone conversations.
The case was one of a number at the time that raised fears about violence between drug gangs in the Netherlands, which operates a tolerant soft-drugs policy.
In the same year the brother of a key witness in the trial of alleged “Mocro Maffia” drugs baron Ridouan Taghi was shot dead, and in 2019 the witness’s lawyer was also killed.
The Netherlands was then stunned in 2021 by the shooting of famed crime reporter Peter R. de Vries in broad daylight.