FOUR years ago, Europe's so-called "Godmother of Cocaine" vanished without a trace in Amsterdam.
Born and raised in the Netherlands, Naima Jillal rose up the ranks as a powerful drug boss at the age of 47, importing cocaine from South American cartels and earning herself the nickname "Auntie".
Tonnes of cocaine were transported through ports in the Netherlands and Belgium in containers filled with fruit.
Jillal emerged as the powerful broker behind many of these lucrative shipments, acting as the middleman.
From the drug dealers and the drug bosses paying for the shipments to the drug lords in Costa Rica and Ecuador supplying the goods, Jillal built a powerful network of contacts.
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But in 2019, she was picked up by a mystery car in front of her luxury apartment in Amsterdam and never seen again.
Cops now believe Jillal was tortured and is no longer alive.
Amsterdam police spokesman Thomas Aling told The Sun: "We're still doing the investigation about the disappearing of Naima Jillal and at this moment we don't have an exact lead where she is."
He said "it is possible" Jillal was murdered and explained: "She's disappeared but we really don't know what's happened with her. But we think she's not alive anymore."
Chilling torture photos
Shortly after she vanished, gruesome pictures emerged of a woman's naked and battered body tied to a chair with a finger and toe chopped off - and police believe it could be Jillal.
Netherlands Police said: "There was no trace of Naima Jillal for a long time. Until photos of a woman were found on a telephone seized in the Marengo investigation.
"It is suspected that it is Jillal and that she was probably tortured and is no longer alive."
The Public Prosecution Service has now bumped the reward for information that leads to the arrest of a man suspected to have been involved in her disappearance to 200,000 euros (£172,000).
Jillal, who would this year be 56, is alleged to have worked with several well-known Dutch cocaine smugglers and been involved in a number of underworld clashes.
Mr Aling refused to comment on whether Jillal was ever charged with any crimes but said: "[It's] a missing persons case and of course we know that she was involved with all kinds of drugs-related things.
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"She was involved by doing the drug smuggling, we think."
The police spokesman said the extent of her involvement in drug organisations is not known - nor is the size of her alleged operation.
He said: "We don't know exactly what her role was. She was doing her role in the drug smuggling and she was involved with the big names in the drug smuggling scene."
'Blew money on luxe items'
Jillal emerged suddenly in the drug world in mid-2014 and quickly ascended from being a cocaine saleswoman to a person in a position of real power, according to RTL Nieuws.
The publication reported she arranged large shipments of cocaine from the comfort of her home in Marbella, Spain.
Another local paper, the AD, wrote that she made plenty of enemies and loads of cash in her illegal line of work by selling more places in containers than were available and alerting police to drug shipments.
The millions she earned were blown on luxury items including expensive clothes and an apartment for her son, writes the AD.
She is also said to have spent 102,500 euros (£88,200) on rent each year for apartments in Marbella and Estepona and more than 700,000 euros (£602,600) on designer watches.
In 2017, the Criminal Intelligence Team seemed to confirm her involvement in the underworld when it said: "The Moroccan Naima, who comes from Utrecht, has been working in the cocaine trade for years,” reported Netherlands media outlet Het Parool.
"Naima has the contacts to set up lines for the large-scale import of cocaine."
Still no body
The Moroccan-Dutch mum reportedly found herself in scalding hot water in 2018 and 2019 when drug cartel bosses grew suspicious she was informing police about their criminal activity.
Such concerns reportedly peaked following a drug bust in Rotterdam in early 2019 which some key underworld players thought "Auntie" Jillal may have played a hand in.
On October 20, 2019, she was spotted in central Amsterdam stepping into a black BMW about 9.30pm. She was never seen alive again.
In December the same year, a Blackberry phone was found in Dubai during the arrest of alleged Moroccan-Dutch crime boss Ridouan Taghi which contained a photo of a mutilated woman tied to a chair.
In a second picture, the woman's abdomen was reportedly seen with a cut-off finger and toe and, in a third, she was seen lying naked on her stomach on the floor.
According to the publication, police determined by looking at the disturbing photos' metadata that they were taken the same night Jillal vanished.
Mr Aling confirmed police found clothing and a handbag belonging to Jillal in a warehouse at the port of Antwerp in Belgium in 2021.
He said: "We didn't find anything of her body.
"It was a possibility that she was underground there, but we searched there with dogs and we dug the whole thing out and we couldn't find anything."
A batch of 4,200kg of cocaine was seized from the same port warehouse site the previous year.
'Dead within a minute'
Jillal's name and a picture of her smiling face remains on the "missing persons" page of the Netherlands Police website today.
The site reads: "There is a suspicion that she has become a victim of a crime," which Mr Thomas said was in reference to her possibly being murdered.
It further notes that Jillal's loved ones have not received any signs of life from her since she disappeared four years ago, stating: "The family is very concerned."
As far as police are aware, her family remains completely in the dark as to what happened to Jillal.
On the night she vanished, she was wearing black clothes and a three-quarter-length coat. Cops said she had long brown hair and was 165cm tall.
There were two criminal groups looking for her at the time, Het Parool reports.
A source reportedly told the Telegraaf: "One of the [people] present gave her a few punches, after which she fell to the ground. She was dead within a minute."
Rumours swirl
Cops previously indicated Jillal could have been the victim of a settlement in the underworld, or her disappearance was related to a failed cocaine deal for which she would have been held responsible.
She was believed to have had a target on her back as her allegedly being a broker for drug traffickers meant she had access to privileged information and gangsters thought she might be informing cops.
Her high-flying life as a drug smuggler reportedly involved her taking cocaine orders from South American cartels and paying large sums of money to customs officers at the Port of Rotterdam to pass cargo.
Some of the people and groups she worked with were supposedly unhappy with her selling too many spaces in the containers coming to the Netherlands, as they would fill up and she'd pocket extra cash.
The fact that she spoke Spanish was said to have helped her in her alleged role as a logistician.
Mr Aling said in the days after she vanished: "As said earlier, we fear for her fate. We know that she has contacts in the criminal environment. She may be a victim of a conflict in that world," Het Parool writes.
A spokesperson said cops' suspicions that Jillal had become a victim of a crime became "more concrete" when the photos of the dismembered woman surfaced.
Three suspects believed to have played "a possible role" in the case were arrested in November 2019 but freed a short time later.
Police leads exhausted
Netherlands Police is now offering a significant reward to anyone who can provide information that leads to the arrest of Jos Leijdekkers, who goes by the nickname Bolle Jos.
The police stated: "He is suspected of, among other things, international cocaine trafficking and money laundering."
They added: "It is also suspected that he is involved in very serious cases of excessive violence, including the disappearance and death of Naima Jillal.
"This woman disappeared on October 20, 2019 after getting into a car in Amsterdam. Intercepted crypto communication messages reveal that Leijdekkers played an important role in Jillal's disappearance."
Mr Aling told The Sun that police have now exhausted all leads and there are no more places for them to search for Jillal's body, based on what they currently know.
If or when new information comes to light, the case can progress. But for now, it is stagnant.
He said: "Of course we are looking still with international partners. We're looking for him [Leijdekkers] because we don't think he's in the Netherlands.
"We're still busy with the case in all kind of points and we're looking for Jos Leijdekkers and a lot of people are helping with us to find him, for example the Turkish police, they're busy with it.
"Just a couple of days ago, a man was also arrested who was a family member of Jos Leijdekkers. So everybody's looking for him.
"And we're looking also for new information for Naima Jillal, where she is, and to solve this problem also. For the case and for the family of Naima Jillal."
