May 21, 2026 – Dutch special forces twice came close in recent weeks to arresting fugitive drug baron “Bolle Jos” Leijdekkers in West Africa, in a covert operation that prime minister Rob Jetten’s cabinet had approved after the previous Schoof government refused to authorise it, De Telegraaf has reported.
The operation was abandoned twice at the last moment this month, and would have involved Dutch marines and the national police’s special interventions unit seizing Leijdekkers in international waters off Sierra Leone as he travelled by boat to neighbouring Liberia.
The public prosecution department (OM) declined to confirm or deny the account but said Leijdekkers’ arrest remained its highest priority.
Cabinet split
According to Telegraaf, plans for the operation were drawn up in the second half of 2025 by the police, the OM and the defence ministry, and put to the Schoof cabinet after extensive legal review.
Then-justice minister Foort van Oosten and then-defence minister Ruben Brekelmans, both VVD, refused to approve it.
The plan was reviewed again after the Jetten cabinet – a D66, VVD and CDA minority coalition – was sworn in on 23 February. It was supported by Jetten, current justice minister David van Weel and defence minister Dilan Yeşilgöz, both also VVD.
Months of training
In preparation, the Netherlands acquired a foreign-registered private vessel to serve as an offshore base, as the long-term presence of a Dutch naval ship was considered too risky. Both the marines and the DSI trained day and night for the operation, Telegraaf said.
Both attempts in May were called off at the last moment. Telegraaf attributed the cancellations to unspecified “external factors”.
Omroep Brabant reported that one attempt was abandoned because Leijdekkers did not leave Sierra Leone as expected. Crime reporter John van den Heuvel has said he believes “the momentum has disappeared” for further attempts.
Leijdekkers’ history
Leijdekkers, who is 34 and originally from Breda, has been sentenced in absentia to 24 years in jail in the Netherlands and to more than 50 years in Belgium for organising large-scale cocaine smuggling and ordering a murder.
He is also a suspect in the disappearance and presumed death of Naima Jillal. Last year a Rotterdam court ordered him to repay €96 million to the Dutch state.
After fleeing the Netherlands in 2022 via Spain, Dubai and Turkey, Leijdekkers resurfaced in Sierra Leone, where he reportedly poses as a businessman called “Omar Sheriff” and is engaged to a daughter of president Julius Maada Bio.
The West African country has no extradition treaty with the Netherlands and has not responded to formal legal assistance requests under either prime minister. Van Weel met his Sierra Leonean counterpart in Geneva last week in what officials described as a further push for cooperation.
Spanish police earlier this month intercepted a cargo ship sailing from Sierra Leone carrying tens of tonnes of cocaine, in a seizure investigators have linked to Leijdekkers’ network.
