A Moroccan prisoner, sentenced to death for the double murder of two Scandinavian tourists in 2018, committed suicide in his cell on Tuesday morning, the prison administration announced.
Imprisoned in the Oujda prison (eastern Morocco), Abderrahim Khayali, 36, “committed suicide by hanging himself with a piece of cloth that he took from his clothes, which he attached to the window of his cell,” the prison management specified. in a press release. release.
Gone before the kill
Abderrahim Khayali had been sentenced on appeal to the death sentence before 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 murdered on December 17, 2018 while camping in the High Atlas Mountains (south).
Abderrahim Khayali had been part of the High Atlas team but left before the killings. However, the prosecutor had requested an appeal against the death sentence passed against him. The other three sentenced to death, radicalized Islamists, had confessed their participation in this double murder that shocked Morocco.
The theoretical de facto capital punishment
Twenty other defendants – including a Spanish-Swiss citizen – were sentenced to prison terms between 5 and 30 years for “forming a gang for the purpose of committing terrorist acts” in connection with this case.
Capital punishment is de facto theoretical in Morocco due to a moratorium in place since 1993.
Source: BFM TV
