[ad_1]
The trial of the alleged jihadist badbadins of two decapitated Scandinavian hikers in the Moroccan High Atlas mountains was completed on Thursday, the lawyers being ready to present their last arguments.
Prosecutors have called for the death penalty for the three leading jihadist suspects behind the "bloodthirsty" murder of young Scandinavians.
Abdessamad Ejjoud, an alleged 25-year-old leader, and two radicalized Moroccans have been sentenced to a maximum sentence, although the country has been de facto free of executions since 1993.
Petitions on social media have called for their execution.
The three men confessed to killing Danish student Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, and Norway's Maren Ueland, 28.
The prosecution has called for jail terms ranging from 15 years to life imprisonment for the 21 other defendants tried since May 2 before an anti-terrorism court in Salé, near Rabat.
Abderrahim Khayali, a 33-year-old plumber who had accompanied the three attackers but had left the scene before the killing, was wanted.
The prosecution sentenced to twenty years in prison Kevin Zoller Guervos, a Hispano-Swiss convert to Islam.
According to the prosecution, all but three of the people found to be supporters of the Islamic State (IS) group, although the IS itself never claimed responsibility for these murders.
The three murderers of the girls were "bloodthirsty monsters," the prosecutor said, noting that an autopsy report had revealed 23 wounds on Jespersen's beheaded body and 7 more on the one in the case. ; Ueland.
Ejjoud, a clandestine imam, had confessed to beheading one of the girls and Younes Ouaziyad, a 27-year-old carpenter, while Rachid Afatti, 33, had filmed the murders on his mobile phone.
The defense team stated that it would ask the judge to consider extenuating circumstances.
"We will appeal to extenuating circumstances because of their precarious social conditions and their psychological imbalance," Hafida Mekessaou told AFP.
Khalid Elfataoui, representing Jespersen's family, said that she would read a "devastating" letter received from the Danish woman's family and would seek compensation of 10 million dirhams (just over one million dollars). dollars) on their behalf.
The Norwegian woman's family refused to participate in the trial.
& # 39; Failure to monitor & # 39;
Jespersen's lawyers accused the authorities of failing to monitor the activities of some of the suspects before the two women camping in a remote mountainous region were slaughtered.
The brutal killings could have been spared if the authorities had taken into account information on the behavior of the street vendor Ejjoud, they said.
The alleged gang leader who had been found guilty of attempting to join ISIS in Syria was released from prison in 2015 and then met with former detainees and other people without verification of the authorities, said lawyer Khaled El Fataoui.
He claimed that the police had been informed of the activities of the group of men from disadvantaged backgrounds but had not acted.
The lawyer Houssine Raji added that the suspects were in Koranic schools run by the religious Mohamed al-Maghraoui, which was closed in 2010 by court order but ordered by the Minister of Justice to reopen in 2012.
Investigators said the "cell" was inspired by the ideology of the IS, but the head of the Moroccan anti-terror campaign insisted that the accused had not no contact with the jihadist group in areas of conflict.
Source link
