Three Islamic State group supporters who brutally raped and beheaded two Scandinavian hikers in Morocco have been sentenced to death.
The verdicts for ringleader Abdessamad Ejjoud, Younes Ouaziyad and Rachid Afatti came after petitions in Morocco that saw the overwhelming majority of people wanting to see them executed. These would be the first executions in the country since 1993.
Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, from Denmark, and Maren Ueland, 28, from Norway, were found beheaded in the High Atlas mountains in December. During the trial, the court was informed that Ejjoud, 25, and Ouaziyad, 27, had beheaded the two women while Afatti, 33, filmed the murders on his mobile phone.
The Mother of Ms Jespersen told the court via a letter: “The most just thing would be to give these beasts the death penalty they deserve.” Ejjoud, an underground imam, admitted killing one of the two women in May. “I beheaded one of them… I regret it,” the street vendor told the court.
Afatti filmed the attack on his mobile phone. A video appearing to show one of the women being beheaded was shared online by IS supporters. Police in Norway said the video was almost certainly real. UNN staff have seen this video and it is one of the most distressing and sickening things we have ever seen.
In court, Ejjoud said: “We loved Islamic State and prayed to God for it.”
Their defence team argued against capital punishment saying that there were: “mitigating circumstances on account of their precarious social conditions and psychological disequilibrium.”
They said the men had a “very low” level of education and came from modest backgrounds. Kevin Zoller Guervos, a Spanish-Swiss convert to Islam, was the only non-Moroccan on trial. He was accused of teaching the main suspects how to use an encrypted messaging service and to use weapons. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “joining a terrorist group.”
The prosecution labelled the three killers as “bloodthirsty monsters” after the autopsy report found 23 injuries on Ms Jespersen’s decapitated body and seven on that of Ms Ueland.
Their bodies were found on 17 December in a tent in an isolated area near Mount Toubkal, Morocco’s highest peak and a popular destination for hikers. The killers took four days to identify the women as targets, the prosecution said, and chose them because other potential victims were with guides.
The families of the girls criticised Moroccan authorities for not doing enough to save the girls but many have also commented that the girls showed a tragic level of naivety in going to such a remote area predominantly occupied by uneducated savages. On their social media profiles they had shared images supportive of open borders and mass migration as well as political speeches praising humanity. There have been numerous cases such us this with a husband and wife who went cycling around Central Asia to prove it was a peaceful area and ended up being murdered by a local ISIS affiliated group.
Unity News Network (UNN) Staff Writer | To find out more details about our staff, please head to the About Us section on our website.
