One of four sentenced to death for beheading two young hikers in 2018 hanged himself in his cell with his clothes on.
A Moroccan prisoner, sentenced to death for the double murder of two Scandinavian tourists in 2018, committed suicide Tuesday morning in his cell, announced the prison administration.
Incarcerated in Oujda prison (eastern Morocco), Abderrahim Khayali, 36, “killed himself by hanging using a piece of fabric taken from his clothes, which he attached to the window of his cell “Said the management of the penitentiary establishment in a press release.
Abderrahim Khayali had been sentenced on appeal to the death penalty in an anti-terrorism court in October 2019, along with three other defendants, for the beheading of two young Scandinavian tourists in Morocco on behalf of the Islamic State (IS) group. Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, a 24-year-old Danish student and her friend Maren Ueland, a 28-year-old Norwegian, were brutally killed on December 17, 2018 while camping in the mountains of the High Atlas (south).
Gone before the killing
Abderrahim Khayali had taken part in the team in the High Atlas but he left before the killings. The prosecutor had nevertheless requested an appeal against the death sentence against him. The other three condemned to death, radicalized Islamists, had confessed their participation in this double murder which had shocked Morocco. Twenty other defendants (including a Spanish-Swiss national) were sentenced to between 5 and 30 years’ imprisonment for “forming a gang with a view to committing terrorist acts” in connection with this case.
Capital punishment is de facto theoretical in Morocco due to a moratorium in force since 1993.
