Who is Steven Lyons' lawyer? Dutch man who has represented armed robbers and drug dealer

Crime boss Steven Lyons contested his extradition from the Netherlands to Spain today at a hearing in Amsterdam. The 46-year-old was arrested and detained at Bali airport at the end of March on an Interpol Red Notice . He was deported to the Netherlands and been held in a high-security prison alongside other notorious cons since April. He appeared before judges at Amsterdam District Court today to contest his extradition to Spain where he is wanted to face organised crime charges.

Alongside him in his fight to avoid extradition is his lawyer, Arne Kloosterman, who has represented clients in a string of high-profile cases. On his profile page at STYX law firm in Amsterdam, Kloosterman is described as: "Mr AD Kloosterman was sworn in as a lawyer in 1999. With more than 20 years of experience, Arne primarily acts in large-scale and high-profile (international) criminal cases." Here, we take a look at some of the previous crime and court cases which the lawyer has ben involved in. Dutch prosecutors brought charges against a former Amsterdam youth worker named Anass A in 2021.

He was accused of arranging the sale of Kalashnikov rifles to his cousin, a Belgian national named Ali El Haddad Asufi. It was alleged that the weapons were then used in the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. Asufi was later convicted for his part in organising the atrocity which saw 130 people killed including 90 in the Bataclan theatre. Kloosterman's client claimed that he had only ever traded in marijuana with his cousin, and not weapons.

In court, Kloosterman called for Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the 10-man terror unit which actually carried out the attacks, to give evidence. He said: "The interrogations could potentially shed new light on my client's innocence." Anass A was later fully acquitted of all charges by the Rotterdam court due to a lack of sufficient evidence in February 2023. Weapons, including machine guns , were found hidden in barrels underground near to Zwolle, a city in the northeast of the Netherlands, in 2020. Within the enormous cache was a machine gun which was used in the killing of Henk Wolters on New Year's Eve 2019.

A Zwolle gangster nicknamed 'De Gier' was arrested over the shooting and the cache of weapons. According to Dutch media, De Gier had been involved in two previous murders and, when he was just 11, he witnessed a friend stabbing another friend to death.

Although Kloosterman didn't represent De Geir, he did represent a second person known only as 'HD', a 52-year-old man. HD had also been held in connection with the weapons find and Kloosterman told reporters that the evidence against his client was "paper thin". He said: "It involves such a big case, so many weapons, and yet you only question my client twice? And for at most half an hour each time." One man, a 47-year-old Frenchman, was killed in a police shoot-out after an armoured Brinks truck was robbed in Amsterdam in 2021.

Much of the €14.5 million - around £12.9 million - haul from the robbery, which included gold, platinum and other precious metals is still unaccounted for. Six men were arrested, one of whom was represented by Kloosterman. Lawyers for the men argued that all of the shots were fired by police, with Kloosterman saying: "It could be that it was the police who fired at random and not my client." In April 2023, eight members of the gang from Belgium, France and Morocco were convicted for their part in the robbery and given sentences of up to 15 years. The 'Maggiora case' was a major international drug trafficking investigation that saw five men jailed for trafficking cocaine, speed, and MDMA from the Netherlands into Germany and Sweden.

However, they were later acquitted and freed from prison after an appeals court ruled police and prosecutors had made secret deals with the star witness. Mr Kloosterman acted for a female defendant known as DB, whose boyfriend was one of the alleged drug traffickers. She received clothes, luxury items, a Mini Cooper and an expensive holiday from him, with a prosecutor telling the court: "Does love make you blind? Sometimes it does, but here it was the glittering tinsel that blinded suspect B." However, her lawyer argued that the money laundering case against her was built on candid posts from Twitter, rather than hard evidence.

B herself said: "The picture the prosecutor is painting of me is absolutely not true." Get Daily Record Premium for just £1 per month in exclusive offer to celebrate the world cup. Click HERE . Get more Daily Record exclusives by signing up for free to Google’s preferred sources. Click HERE .