Beheaded body of man (23) found in a burning van on Mijehof

Nabil Amzieb, a 23-year-old man from Amsterdam, was murdered and decapitated in March 2016. During the night of Monday 7 to Tuesday 8 March 2016, at around 02:15, a burned-out Volkswagen Caddy was found on Mijehof in Amsterdam-Zuidoost. Inside the vehicle was the body of Nabil Amzieb. His head was missing. A day later, on Wednesday morning, 9 March 2016, at around 07:00, passers-by found his head outside Fayrouz, a shisha lounge on Amstelveenseweg in Amsterdam-Zuid. Surveillance footage showed a man walking towards the lounge with a garbage bag, placing the head down and then calmly walking away. The discovery caused shock because of the gruesome way in which the body had been left, but also because Fayrouz Lounge had already been linked in reports to Amsterdam’s criminal underworld. Police and media described Nabil Amzieb as known to the authorities, and his death was quickly placed within the so-called Mocro war, the violent conflict between rival drug networks in Amsterdam and beyond. In Opsporing Verzocht, police later reconstructed that Nabil had still been at home in his apartment on Kattenburgerstraat on Friday, 4 March 2016, and that later that day he was probably in the area around Muiderpoort station. After that, his trail went cold until his body was found in Zuidoost on 8 March. The Caddy containing his body had no licence plates and was set on fire shortly after being abandoned. Police investigated who had driven the vehicle, who had left the body there and who had later placed the head outside Fayrouz. In May 2016 it became known that Omar A. was detained in Morocco on suspicion of involvement in the murder and decapitation of Nabil Amzieb, after Amzieb's family filed a complaint against him there; he was held for almost two months. His lawyer said the suspicion was unfounded, and the Dutch authorities informed the Moroccan government both informally and formally that Omar A. was not a suspect in the Netherlands: his possible involvement was only one of many scenarios under investigation, and no evidence for it was ever found. The arrest therefore did not lead to a conviction for the murder of Nabil Amzieb. The case therefore remained unsolved. The murder was later repeatedly described as one of the most macabre events in Amsterdam’s underworld war: a 23-year-old man was killed, his body was burned and left in Amsterdam-Zuidoost, and his head was placed the next morning outside a shisha lounge on Amstelveenseweg as a warning or message.