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21 September 2004
AMSTERDAM — Former world champion boxer Nordin ben
Salah was shot and killed in Amsterdam on Monday night,
it was reported Tuesday.
A spokesman for a Purmerend sports school where
"Fighting Nordin" trained confirmed to Expatica on
Tuesday that the 32-year-old Moroccan-born man had been
killed.
He said Ben Salah finished training on Monday night
and caught a train at 9.30pm to Amsterdam,
where police believe he was confronted by two to
three men.
Ben Salah, a Dutch national, was then shot at about
10pm on the President Kennedylaan in Amsterdam. He died
later in hospital. "It is a tragedy," the spokesman
said.
The boxer's website had
not officially confirmed the murder by 2.30pm on
Tuesday.
Police have refused to confirm the victim's identity,
but say he was shot several times. They are searching
for several suspects.
A motorbike was found on the Weesperzijde, but police
have not yet confirmed if it was used in the shooting,
newspaper De Telegraaf reported.
Ben Salah recaptured his intercontinental WBA super
middleweight title in September 2003, but was more
recently active as a boxing promoter.
He was due to defend the title in September this
year, but the fight was postponed because he had injury
problems with his arms.
The sports school spokesman said Ben Salah thus lost
his title because it must be defended within 12 months.
He was preparing to reclaim the title again in
November.
There has been a string of gangland slayings in
Amsterdam in recent years, but the spokesman denied Ben
Salah was involved in the underworld.
"He was not in the criminal circuit. He was a boxer
and manager and that's all we know. And he was a boxing
teacher; he worked the whole day in the boxing centre,"
he said.
There have been four high profile gangland slayings
in the Amsterdam region so far this year. The most
notable was the murder in May of real estate magnate
Willem Endstra, the reputed "banker of the underworld"
in the Netherlands. His killer is still at large.
[Copyright Expatica News 2004]
Subject: Dutch news | 
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