Brussels (Brussels Morning) – The Antwerp Court of Appeal declared criminal proceedings against drug criminal Yannick ‘Flash’ W. inadmissible due to a procedural error during his extradition from Spain, sparing him prosecution for threatening a dock worker.
The Court of Appeal in Antwerp declared the criminal proceedings against Antwerp drug criminal Yannick ‘Flash’ W. inadmissible in the case of threatening a dock worker, due to a procedural error during his extradition from Spain. He cannot therefore be prosecuted for those facts. At first instance, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
Yannick W. was arrested in Spain at the end of 2020 and extradited to Belgium in February 2021. Since then he has been in custody – and is now also in prison – for his involvement in various drug and violent crimes. One of those violent crimes was threatening a dock worker.
How Did Yannick W. Evade Prosecution for Threatening a Dock Worker?
The victim was hit by a van around 10 p.m. on September 30, 2020. Four men posing as police officers shouted at him to get out or they would shoot him in the head. The dock worker locked his car, accelerated and drove away quickly. The man had been monitored for weeks via a GPS tracker under his car. Intercepted messages from a Sky ECC group chat showed that the intention was to force him to cooperate in the importation of narcotics.
One of the participants in the group chat was identified as Yannick W., who allegedly directed the others. He was sentenced to five years in prison in January 2023 and appealed. His lawyer argued before the court of appeal that his client was extradited from Spain for other, but not for these, offences and that he could therefore not be prosecuted for it. Unlike the judges at first instance, the court of appeal followed the defence’s position and declared the criminal action inadmissible.
What Are the Details of Yannick W.’s Criminal Charges?
Yannick W. was also charged for his involvement in the attempted import of 1,449 kilos of cocaine. While in custody, he arranged a warehouse for the removal of the consignment, but it was seized at the port of Rotterdam on September 29, 2021. In the first instance, he had been sentenced to five years in prison.
The court found his guilt proven and ruled that there was a unity of intent with facts for which he was sentenced to ten years in prison in February 2023. This involved, among other things, the import of 3.7 tons of cocaine, which he had again organized from his cell. The court imposed an additional prison sentence of five years on him.
Yannick W. is currently also on trial in the Zwemmer case, the drug case involving ‘Bolle’ Jos Leijdekkers about the gone wrong removal of a shipment of cocaine in which a fire guard from a port company was seriously assaulted.
