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Soufian E. was sentenced to a long prison term in Bamberg, Germany, on Wednesday. The former professional player of De Graafschap, among others, was part of a mega-trial in which sixteen people – who were mainly born in the Netherlands – were charged with a huge series of ATM bombings in Germany.
The ATM robbery gang has blown up thirty ATMs since 2021, spread across the country. All the explosions caused mega damage of millions of euros. There are said to be multiple gangs operating in varying compositions.
At the start of the mega-trial in a high-security sports hall in Bamberg in April, all the suspects briefly introduced themselves. “I am a former footballer by profession,” Soufian E. said at the time.
Fourteen of the sixteen suspects made a deal just before the verdict. In exchange for confessing, the suspects received a prison sentence ranging from one year and nine months to seven years and two months. Soufian E. must go to prison for four years and three months.
However, E. may not have to serve the entire sentence. Because the convicts were not arrested in Germany, they will be transferred to detention centers in the Netherlands in the coming months. In similar cases, it turned out that convicts are sometimes eligible for early release, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
The thirty-year-old former midfielder Soufian E. played 52 official matches for De Graafschap between 2013 and 2015. He then left for Morocco to play professional football for a few smaller clubs. In 2022, he resurfaced in the Netherlands at amateur club Sportlust '46 from Woerden.
The former midfielder tore back to the Netherlands at enormous speeds on the motorway after an ATM explosion in Germany. In cooperation with the Dutch authorities, he was subsequently tracked down by the German police.
The trial in Germany is being held in a highly secured sports hall. Part of the measures taken by the authorities was that all cars with Dutch license plates in the area were pulled over and checked for passports, among other things.
The Telegraph previously reported that the Dutch suspects in this case also hold a passport from another country, usually Morocco, sometimes Afghanistan or Romania.
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