Gangstamillio, the stage name of Urvin 'Nuto' Wawoe, appears in one of his rap videos titled Bloki den Bloki.
SUFFISANT/PHILIPSBURG--Urwin “Nuto” Wawoe, the alleged second-in-command of notorious criminal organisation No Limit Soldiers (NLS), spent the first afternoon of his trial denying having ordered the assassinations of six people on the Dutch and French sides of the island between 2016 and 2017.
“I never ordered anyone to be killed,” said Wawoe, whose mega-trial is being held at the Suffisant marine barracks in Curaçao for security reasons. A livestream of the proceedings is being broadcast in the Philipsburg courthouse.
Wawoe has been charged with orchestrating the murder of Kevin “Bones” Metura in French Cul-de-Sac on February 7, 2016; the murder of Bling Bling Crew leader Omar Jones in the Point Blanche prison on August 31, 2016; and the murder of A.R.L. “Nino” Browne-Thewet at his car wash in Sucker Garden on March 14, 2017.
He was also allegedly behind the attempted murder of Kimoy Gumbs in French Quarter on April 8, 2016; and the attempted murders of Thaddeus “Static” Nunes and his twin brother Marini “Addict” Nunes in Philipsburg on November 5, 2016.
Prosecutors claim Wawoe and alleged NLS leader Shurandy “Tyson” Quant wanted the six men dead after suspecting them of being behind the murder of Wawoe’s girlfriend, Latoya “Nuta” Flanders, who was gunned down in front of her house in French Quarter on November 5, 2015.
Prosecutors believe the chain of violence began on September 11, 2014, when Wawoe survived an attempt on his life while serving a multi-year sentence at the Point Blanche prison for cocaine, marijuana and firearm possession. Carlos Richardson, a convicted hitman for the rival Bling Bling Crew, had failed to shoot Wawoe that day with a gun that had been smuggled into the prison.
Wawoe was later transferred to a detention facility in the Netherlands for his safety. Prosecutors believe his girlfriend was murdered because his enemies could not get him in Dutch jail.
The prosecution’s case is based on secretly-recorded conversations of Wawoe in prison, and recovered data from encrypted messaging system PGP Safe, whose servers were confiscated and deciphered by Dutch authorities in unrelated investigations in 2016 and 2017.
Never gave orders
Wawoe consistently denied the accusations during Monday afternoon’s court session, saying he never placed hits on any of the six men. He denied saying many of the threatening quotes attributed to him, and claimed in some instances that authorities had misinterpreted or mistranslated the conversations in Papiamentu.
In the days and months after his girlfriend’s murder, investigators heard Wawoe naming people as being responsible for the crime. Prosecutors say the initial list featured Mentura, Browne-Thewet and Gumbs, but later included the Nunes brothers and Jones.
Wawoe said he had not wanted to take matters into his own hands and had only been collecting information to hand over to the police.
“This thing hurt me tremendously. I was very sad and tried to find out who did it,” Wawoe told the court. “I wanted the police to solve the case.”
Wawoe said he had only called Gumbs’ name because Flanders, in the days before her death, had seen them on the street with “strangers.”
In another conversation, Wawoe reportedly said about Gumbs: “When a rat is in his hole, it is time to spray poison. I don’t have to kill him. I can make sure that he won’t be able to walk no more.”
Wawoe argued on Monday that this passage had been poorly translated by investigators.
As for the other conversations in which he expressed a desire to kill those behind his girlfriend’s murder, Wawoe claimed that these were merely grief-fuelled outbursts and not serious threats.
In a recorded conversation from March 2016, Wawoe said the “town twins” must be dealt with harshly and without mercy.
“There are many twins in town,” Wawoe told the court, denying that this conversation revolved around the Nunes brothers.
Wawoe claimed that the “Nino” he mentioned on some of the tapes was not Nino Browne-Thewet, but another man with the same nickname who lives in the Dutch city of Tilburg.
Wawoe said he did not have “problems” with Jones or the Nunes brothers and therefore had no motive to target them.
According to the prosecution, there were rumours that convicted killer Kathron “Kuchi” Fortune was behind Gumbs’ attempted murder, and that he and fellow convicted killer Hashantley Martina had tried to murder the Nunes brothers.
“Absolutely not,” Wawoe said after the judge asked if he knew Martina.
Wawoe said about Fortune: “Me and him was ‘hi-and-bye’ and that’s it.”
Although he and Fortune were both incarcerated at the Point Blanche prison in 2014, Wawoe emphasised that Fortune had been in a different cell block and their time had only overlapped for “two or three months” before he was transferred to the Netherlands.
What happens next?
Besides the local murders, Wawoe has also been charged with large-scale drug trafficking, money-laundering and membership in a criminal organisation.
He is also accused of orchestrating the so-called Hato shooting on July 15, 2014, which claimed the lives of Erwin “Junni Djais” Juliana and his cousin Shentley “Champi” Arnhem. Seven innocent bystanders were also injured when gunmen wielding automatic weapons opened fire outside the arrival hall of Curaçao’s airport.
Juliana was the leader of criminal organisation Buena Vista City (BVC), which reportedly had an ongoing war with NLS at the time.
Wawoe answered questions about his alleged involvement in this mass shooting on Monday morning.
The trial continues at 9:00am today, Tuesday, and Wawoe is expected to answer questions about the remaining charges over the next two days.
The prosecution is slated to present its case on Thursday, followed by the defence’s case on Friday.
The trial is scheduled to end on July 3, after a total of eight full days of court sessions.
A verdict is anticipated in the third week of September. If convicted on all counts, Wawoe faces a lifelong prison sentence.
Themis
Wawoe is one of a number of suspects in the large-scale “Themis” investigation into NLS, which dealt in arms- and drug-trafficking, money-laundering and murder-for-hire.
Wawoe was arrested in the Dominican Republic in 2021 and later extradited to Curaçao.
In March, the Court of First Instance in St. Maarten sentenced high-ranking NLS member Cecil “Rasta” Heilligger to 11 years and three months in prison for organising the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Kimoy Gumbs on April 8, 2016.
The court considered it proven that he had worked in “close consultation with one of the leaders of the organisation to ensure that the attack actually took place.”
Heilligger had also been on trial for allegedly setting up the fatal shootings of Kevin Metura and Nino Browne-Thewet, as well as the failed assassination of Marini “Addict” Nunes. However, the court did not find enough evidence to prove his involvement in these crimes.
Alleged topman Quant was arrested in Dubai in November 2020, but this newspaper understands that he has been released by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Dutch kingdom does not have an extradition treaty with the Persian Gulf country.
With roots in the Koraal Specht district of Curaçao, NLS has also operated in the Netherlands, Great Britain and Dutch St. Maarten/French St. Martin.
It has also been linked to high-profile assassinations, such as the 2021 murder of Dutch crime journalist Peter R. de Vries, and the 2013 murder of Curaçao Member of Parliament (MP) Helmin Wiels, who was killed on the orders of former Curaçao Finance Minister George Jamaloodin.
