GUILTY Morocco - Maren Ueland, 28, & Louisa Jespersen, 24, backpackers, beheaded, Dec 2018 *Arrests*

New Posts

PST inne i etterforskningen av dobbeltdrapene i Marokko

The police security service [ PST, Norway ] has gone toMorocco in connection with the murders of Maren Ueland (28) and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen (24).

PST has gone to Morocco in connection with the murders in the Atlas Mountains. This is because of the case's possible connection to the terrorist organization ISIS, according to senior advisor Annett Aamodt in the Police Security Service to NRK.

The murders of the Norwegian woman Maren Ueland and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen from Denmark are being investigated as a terrorist act. At least four of the murder suspects have sworn allegiance to the terrorist group IS.

PST's task is to prevent and investigate criminal offenses against the security of the kingdom. According to Kripos, who investigates the case on behalf of the Norwegian police, the murder of Maren Ueland is not linked to her Norwegian citizenship.

"Based on our surveys and the information we have received from Morocco, there is so far nothing to indicate that Maren Ueland was killed because she was Norwegian," Ida Dahl Nilssen, communication manager of Kripos, writes to NRK.

On Sunday, Moroccan prosecutors filed preliminary charges of terrorist attacks against 15 persons.

A total of 19 men were arrested after the killings. Four people are designated as the main suspects. They would have performed the killings.

None of the four have been in contact with IS members in Syria or Iraq, the country's anti-terrorist Abdelhak Khiam informed the AFP news agency on Sunday.


BBM
 
Safeguard said:
We here on Webslueths, live and breath violent crime day in and day out. We view autopsy photo's (JBR anyone?), bloody crime scene pics, and discuss in great detail the horrors that human kind inflicts on one another all the time. Often there is extreme imagined embellishment of what a victims "Last Moments" may have been like...It's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black to suggest that anyone who views this particular video is somehow an aberrant, disrespectful gore monger, and those who choose not to are somehow morally superior or more spiritually enlightened. IMO.

I do have a fantastic imagination. Which is partly why I did view the crime as it happened. I was not going to simply read what others would have me believe happens. As it turned out, many of the accounts were inaccurate. For instance there was no "Crying and screaming for help in vein"...

It was desperately sad, heinous and yes even injurious to the soul, but are any of these cases we dissect in such great detail any less so? I would say, no, IMO they are not.

I do feel I learned more than I knew before about the kind of savages that commit these murders. They casually chat amongst themselves, (much like I have heard hunters do!), as they complete their deadly task. They provided ample evidence to their identities, and a singularly descriptive composite of the mindset capable of such despicable evil.

These girls have my heart, their family's have my heart, and no, I don't believe shouldering the horror of the true account of Luisa's last moments was in any way disrespectful, on the contrary I now know the truth, and can stand in absolute solidarity with them.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for this!!! You took the words straight out of my mouth
 
Khiame: Swiss-Spanish Suspect Planned More Attacks with Imlil Suspects

Khiame: Swiss-Spanish Suspect Planned More Attacks with Imlil Suspects

Rabat – Moroccan police have arrested at least 23 people as suspects in the murders of Danish Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Norwegian Maren Ueland, who were decapitated near Imlil in the Atlas Mountains.

In a recent interview with Swiss news outlet Tribune de Geneve, [ paywall ] the head of Morocco’s Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ), Abdelhak Khiame, said that the Swiss-Spanish suspect was not “directly involved in the assassination of the two students, but he knew the perpetrators.”


Khiame added that the Swiss suspect and the other suspects had viewed ISIS propaganda films.


“He was in contact with a Daesh operative in Syria via Telegram messaging,” Khiame added.

According to Khiame, the suspect calls himself “Abu Yahia or Abdullah … He first tried to join a Qur’anic school in the south of the kingdom and then he moved to Marrakech.”

He arrived in Morocco in 2015.

After moving to Marrakech, he met with the self-styled “emir of the jihadist cell involved in the murder of two students.” The self-styled emir is the same person who decapitated one of the two victims. The Swiss suspect also participated “in several secret meetings with the members” of the cell.

The suspect was planning to undermine Morocco’s stability through actions targeting security services and tourists when he was radicalized.

“He led some members to practice shooting in a field with blank cartridges and even recruited sub-Saharans with whom he also planned to join Daesh in northern Mali.”

The suspect will be prosecuted in accordance with the 2003 Anti-Terror Law for having ties with a group that planned to commit acts of terror in Morocco.


BBM
 
Medie: 14 anholdt for at hylde drab på skandinaviske kvinder


The Moroccan authorities have arrested 14 people for praising or celebrating the killings of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen from Denmark and Maren Ueland from Norway.

This is written by the Norwegian newspaper VG.

VG has not been officially informed, but has received the info from a source near to the Moroccan investigation.

The legal process against four of the 14 is already underway, and one person has already been sentenced to one year's imprisonment or a fine of 5,000 Moroccan dirhams, which is equivalent to just under 3500 dollars.

Among the detainees there is an editor for a local news media. He would have sent the much-known killing video on the encrypted message service WhatsApp, where he celebrated the act, VG writes.

Other journalists were also in the discussion group.

The two Scandinavian women were found killed in their tent in December. A total of 22 people have been arrested and charged with terrorism.

Among them are four men who, one week before the killings, published a video in which they swear allegiance to the Islamic State.

On Thursday, according to AFP news agency, seven men were presented to a judge in the capital Rabat. The seven men are among the 22. It is not clear what came out of the hearing.

The 25-year-old street salesman Abdessamad Ejjoud is thought to be the brain behind the double murder.

According to the Moroccan authorities, he would have committed the crime with two others: the 27-year-old builder Younes Ouaziyad and the 33-year-old street vendor Rachid Afatti.

Moroccan police have previously stated that Abdessamad Ejjoud is in charge of a terror cell that supports Islamic State.

However, the police do not believe that the leadership of the Islamic State has been involved in the planning of the killings of the two tourists.

Investigation leader Abdelhak Khiam from the police in Morocco has earlier reported, according to AFP, how the killed women lost their lives.

They were stabbed, got their necks cut and were then decapitated.


BBM




I still wonder if those three men managed to upload the video of the assassination. Perhaps they were quick learners but IMHO it is more logical that someone else did that for them, for instance Zoller, and made the video go viral.
 
Nye oplysninger om schweizisk mand bekræfter IS-frygten


Suspect in the tourist murder in Morocco had contact with the Islamic State in Syria before the murders.

The Swiss man, who was arrested shortly before New Year in the case of the double murders of Danish Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and her Norwegian friend Maren Ueland, was in direct contact with IS in Syria before the murders.

This is re[ported by investigator Abdelhak Khiame, head of the Central Investigation Unit in Morocco, of the Swiss newspaper Tribune Geneva.

"He was in contact with an IS terrorist in Syria via the telegram message service. The two met in Geneva," he told the newspaper.

The two young women were brutally murdered during a hiking holiday in the Atlas Mountains in central Morocco shortly before Christmas.

They were found dead on December 17 near the village of Imlil.

Immediately after the murders, three IS-inspired Moroccans were arrested and charged in the case.

Between Christmas and New Year, the Swiss citizen was then arrested in Marrakesh.

He is known by the initials 'K.Z.', and the Swiss convert is now central to the investigation.

In the interview with the Swiss newspaper, Abdelhak Khiame gives more new details about the convert.

He says, among other things, that 'K.Z.' converted to Islam in a mosque in Petit-Saconnex and that he was fully radicalized already in 2014.

The Swiss allegedly is be the leader of the terror cell to which the three killers belonged.

He is charged with having given the murderers shoot training and training them in using communication tools.

"K.Z. was first arrested December 29th. He is not among the three who are suspected of carrying out the killings himself, but according to Moroccan police, he had given arms and technology education to several of them, "the investigator said.

His overall plan is believed to be a desire to overthrow Morocco's stability by attacking tourists and orchestrating a terrorist attack against the security service.

Before 'K.Z.' went to Morocco, he succeeded in getting radicalized several of his family members. According to Dagsavisen.no, he has also recruited extremists for IS in both Switzerland and England.


BBM


Why can't they stop these evil men before they act? Why let them (back) into Europe and travel around? Why wait until people are murdered?
 
ZaZara said:
Why let them (back) into Europe and travel around? Why wait until people are murdered?
Click to expand...

The suspect apparently has citizenship or legal immigrant status in two European countries. This gives him free access to those two nations, and as one in a EU country, access to the rest of the EU by extension.

Once legal immigrant status is obtained, it is usually very difficult to revoke as the holder is entitled to due process by the broad standards of western Europe. Revocation is usually even more difficult for naturalized citizens.

As a side note, France has recently tightened up on its Immigration laws to make revocation of immigrant status and even naturalized citizenship easier. The process, however, is probably still legally difficult.
 
Cryptic said:
The suspect apparently has citizenship or legal immigrant status in two European countries. This gives him free access to those two nations, and as one in a EU country, access to the rest of the EU by extension.

Once legal immigrant status is obtained, it is usually very difficult to revoke as the holder is entitled to due process by the broad standards of western Europe. Revocation is usually even more difficult for naturalized citizens.

As a side note, France has recently tightened up on its Immigration laws to make revocation of immigrant status and even naturalized citizenship easier. The process, however, is probably still legally difficult.
Click to expand...


I know all that. Made my laments against that background.

I may have posted this before, well I know I did, so here goes:

Dtm5E2zWwAUA2gP.jpg:large
 
ZaZara said:
BEHEADED 'by ISIS': Scandinavian women murdered in Morocco were victims of terrorism, Denmark fears | Daily Mail Online

ISIS terrorists are suspected of murdering two Scandinavian women in Morocco Danish officials have said today, confirming that one of them was beheaded on video.

Maren Ueland, 28, from Norway, and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, from Denmark, were found dead near the village of Imlil in Morocco's High Atlas mountains on Monday.

At least one of the suspected killers is an 'extremist', Moroccan authorities have confirmed, prompting fears that the gruesome double murder was an act of terror.

This morning, the PET Danish intelligence service said in a statement that it had authenticated an online video showing the murder of one of the women and that the killings can be connected to ISIS.

-----

Witnesses said that three men from Marrakesh were seen camping close to the women, and local media had earlier reported that sexual assault may have been the motive for the crime.

They were filmed fleeing the scene between 2am and 3am on Monday, on a camera belonging to another camper.

On Wednesday, police arrested a man from the city whose identity card was found at the murder scene.


BBM


Earlier, when their bodies had been found and much was still unclear, the ususal female tourist was interviewed on camera saying this could happen anywhere and it should not hold any woman back from travelling bla bla bla.

Terror alert has been at the highest level in Morocco since 2014.


RIP Maren and Louisa
Click to expand...

( @Foxfire, missing you in this thread. You were the ISIS expert. )
 
Gardenista said:
I do like the way Morocco has arrested so many people. From what I've seen that rarely happens.
Click to expand...

Good point, they have quickly arrested not just the perpetrators, but their jihad associates as well.

The aggressive police action could be due to the threat that the Jiahders pose to Morocco's huge tourism industry. Also, Morocco has been spared the jihad violence that killed tens of thousands of people in neighboring Algeria. The Moroccans want to keep it that way.

In the end though, Morocco has some of the same Jiahd growing soil as Algeria: A government, that while not truly oppressive is well, "institutional" and limits democracy (Morocco is a monarchy, Algeria has a socialist government. Both offer limited elections with pre-determined outcomes).

Then factor in a lot of unemployed youth with limited economic opportunities, and some people wanting more democracy and others looking for answers in their religous roots- though not an Islamic state of jihad.
 
Last edited:
Le compte-rendu d'enquête du patron du BCIJ

The director of the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ), Abdelhak Khiame, tells TelQuel Arabi about the murder of the two Scandinavian tourists in Sidi Chamharouch on 17 December.

Since the murder of two Scandinavian tourists, Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland, on 17 December last in Sidi Chamharouch (Imlil region), the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation has conducted an investigation that has led to the arrest of 22 people suspected of being involved in this double murder which is classified as a terrorism attack. Abdelhak Khiam, head of the BCIJ, reviews the facts for TelQuel Arabi, and reports on the unfolding of this tragedy, which has shocked both local and international public opinion.

It all starts on December 12. On that day, the four members of a network gathered in the house of one of them, the "Emir", where they decided to develop a plan to take action. The next day, they pledge allegiance to the Islamic state. This is evidenced by a video that was later published, with the black banner of the terrorist organization in the background. The allegiance text is read, with some hesitation, by one of the men.

Very early in the morning of December 14, after shaving their beards, the four men left Marrakech in a taxi for the Imlil region. In Asni, the vehicle is stopped by gendarmes. "They had agreed: if the police carried out a stop or search, they would act," says Abdelhak. But the gendarmes just ask them for their papers and let them continue on their way.

Once in Imlil, the terrorists decided to walk to Sidi Chamharouch. They then wander around in search of their prey and the location of their crime. But, for lack of a tranquil environment, the four men did not act. There are always too many people: "Either there were tourists, but accompanied by guides, or Moroccans who were in the area," says the boss of the BCIJ.

On the morning of 16 December, A.K., the cell's emir, left the other three members and headed back to Marrakech. The reasons for his departure are not yet well understood by the BCIJ. According to the evidence from the investigation, the man told the other three members that he would leave to "prepare their escape" and return to the ochre city [ Marrakech]. At a distance, the four terrorists were still communicating via the Telegram application.

And, it is a few hours later that the attack will occur. In the evening of 16-17 December, at around 7 p.m., the two future Scandinavian victims, apparently alone, were walking in search of an open-air place to spend the night. The three men saw them and set up their tent 150 metres from the two young women's and "programmed an alarm at midnight" to proceed with the action.

After "encircling the tent, checking the surroundings, they make noise to wake the victims". When they open the tent, they hit the first victim. The second one escaped and was followed by one of the terrorists. The two hikers were reportedly decapitated. The decapitation of the second victim was filmed by one of the terrorists. As in the video of allegiance to the Islamic State, the authors repeat that it is for "their brothers in Syria." Around one in the morning, the men left the crime scene, heading for Marrakech. In the rush, one of them forgets his identity papers.

"The Emir" then gave the fugitives 1,200 dirhams so that they could flee the ochre city [Marrakech] and go to Agadir. Initially, "they planned to flee to Algeria and then join a Daech subsidiary in Libya," explains Khiame. But their attempt to escape this morning, Monday, December 17, quickly failed.

After trying to hitchhike, in vain, the three terrorists went to the Marrakech bus station. Once on the spot, they were spotted by BCIJ teams: "we already had them under surveillance," Khiame said, but did not give any more details. But, as a precaution, the members of the BCIJ, under Rabat's orders, did not intervene immediately "for fear that they would be armed with explosive belts." It is only once the bus is on the road, far from the bus station, that the police stop the vehicle. Always acting with caution, the team arrested the suspects and "found the weapons of the double murder as well as traces of blood on their clothes". These same clothes are then seized for follow-up investigation.

One of the people arrested in Marrakech was the one who had forgotten his national card in the tent. The man "had a terrorist background," says Khiame, who also tells his story in the video. According to BCIJ, he tried to join Daech's ranks in Syria, following which he was subsequently granted a reduced sentence on appeal and sentenced to one year and one month in prison. After his release, the same man allegedly tried to renew his passport "by lying". As a result, he was sentenced to three months in prison with a suspended sentence. Stuck in Morocco, this person would have decided to carry out an attack on the territory by gathering as many people as possible around him.

As soon as the local authorities discovered the bodies of the two beheaded young women, the BCIJ conducted an investigation in coordination with the Royal Gendarmerie and the Judicial Police of the city of Marrakech. The first results of the investigation, carried out by the Royal Gendarmerie, testify to the fact that the two victims spent the night in a deserted place where they set up their tents, and that they did not know their executioners.

The terrorist tent was found by the gendarmes 150 metres from the crime scene. Inside, they find the identity card forgotten by one of the alleged members of the terrorist cell as well as traces of blood. A wanted notice was then issued "to find the CIN holder and the people accompanying him," Khiame explains.

According to current data from the investigation, the four people involved in this crime reportedly left Marrakech on 14 December and had been in the Imlil region since their departure. Three days after the arrest in Marrakech of the first suspect by the BCIJ, during his interrogation, the latter revealed the identity of the three other persons who accompanied him. "He confessed that these people committed the crime," Khiame confirms.

The Director of the BCIJ also indicated that the four men had met several times in December to agree on the nature of the terrorist act. He added that they "belonged to a vast network" and that they planned to "commit terrorist acts against the authorities, or tourists, but also targeted the Gnaoua festival in Essaouira, as well as a synagogue in the same city," explained the director of the BCIJ.


BBM
 
Overvåket Maren (28) og Louisa (24) i flere timer før de gikk til angrep


When they arrived at the mountain village of Imlil, the terrorists decided to continue on foot to Sidi Chamharouch, which is about 5.5 kilometers from Imlil. Here they walked around looking for victims, and a place where they could commit their planned terrorist act.

But there were too many people present, and the terrorist act was therefore postponed.

The men were keen to go after Western tourists. But before they caught sight of Maren Ueland and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, they were in contact with a British tourist.

Early in the morning of December 16, they talked to the British tourist, whom they planned to kill. This is told by sources close to the investigation to Moroccan TelQuel.

But when the British explained that he was a Muslim, the terrorists chose to let him go. They have themselves explained this to Moroccan investigators says investigator Abdelhak Khiam, according to British media.

Investigators do not yet know whether the British man was actually a Muslim, or whether he lied to escape.


BBM



According to the Daily Mail, the group stumbled upon Maren and Louisa an hour after they met the Englishman.
 
El español que adiestró a los decapitadores del IS en Marruecos

The Spaniard who trained the IS decapitators in Morocco

Versoix. City of 13,000 inhabitants in the canton of Geneva (Switzerland). Famous for its icy rain and for its piece of Lake Geneva. The city where the boy with a family from Vallecas (Madrid) was born, grew up and criminalised. The boy who is accused of being behind the latest terrorist attack in Morocco: the murder of two young European tourists in the Atlas mountains on 17 December.

In his Spanish passport his name is Kevin Zoller Guervos. He later became Abdellah. But he didn't get his hands dirty. He was not one of the four men who slit the throats of Danish Louisa Vesterager Jespersen (24) and Norwegian Maren Ueland (28) with a knife while they slept. Nor has he appeared in the video with the Daesh flag in the background promising fidelity to the self-styled Islamic State (IS). Kevin, 25, was the one who "trained" the executioners, according to the Moroccan police. The man in charge of recruiting mujahideen to sow terror again in the kingdom of Mohamed VI seven years after the last jihadist attack (April 2011, Marrakesh, 17 dead when a bomb exploded).

One of the investigators leading the case agrees to give Chronicle more details: "We are looking at their connections with cells in Morocco and Spain. We believe that he has also been indoctrinating and training people of other nationalities who are already in Europe to commit attacks."

But this story doesn't begin in Morocco. It does so 2,700 kilometers up north in Versoix, with a grief-stricken mother, Madrid's Gema, who denies that her son Kevin is a terrorist. "Everything that is being told is a lie," she sobs as she tries to explain who her son really is. "A young man who had a bad adolescence. He lost his father, who was from Colombia, when he was only 15 years old. He smoked a lot of joints, burned cars and committed several robberies. He entered a juvenile center and was given a choice between reading the Bible or the Koran. He chose the Koran. Then he said that thanks to that book he had realized all his mistakes, converted to Islam and prayed every day for forgiveness for the nonsense he had done. When he left the center he started going to the mosque a lot, but I never noticed anything strange.

This was in 2011 and Kevin was 17 at the time. "He thought he had demons in his head telling him what to do. And that thanks to the Koran he had finally learned to control them," says one of his friends from that time in Geneva. Those "demons" were the ones who made the Swiss state pay Kevin a pension when he came of age due to psychiatric problems. A pension that he still received and with which he remained in Morocco. Because Kevin went to live in Marrakech in 2015. "He told me he was going to Morocco to marry what he called a clean [virgin] woman. Two years ago he found her and now they have a son," explains Gema, his mother, who arrived in Switzerland at the age of 11 with Kevin's grandfather, who found work in Geneva as a marble worker.

Kevin's wife was the one who called Gema last Saturday to tell her that her son had been arrested and that he was being accused of being involved in the murder of the two tourists. "It's impossible. Kevin, his wife and my grandson came to Switzerland on December 15 and stayed until December 19. They wanted to renew some papers quickly so that she could continue to come to Europe and return to Morocco immediately. And the murder was committed on the 17th", the mother justifies.

On Moroccan television, it was immediately reported that the police had arrested a Spanish-Swiss man. The news quickly spread to Europe. And a blurred image was broadcast in which the arrested person was seen in profile, accompanied by the agents, with a leafy beard. "My son didn't have a beard. And it is impossible that he grew so much in a few days since he left Switzerland. He also told me that he had plans for the future. That he had saved 6,000 Swiss francs (5,322 euros) to buy a house," says Gema.

In a statement from the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ), they said that Kevin had an "extremist and violent ideology and is suspected of teaching the killers of tourists the jihadist communication tools and training them to shoot." But the BCIJ has no evidence that Kevin was directly involved in preparing the murder of the tourists.

Investigators give more details: "He and two of his friends [also arrested] have long used social networks to recruit weak-minded people to commit terrorist acts. They also do it by walking around, taking advantage of ignorant people who have nothing and immigrants who pass through Morocco to go to Europe. They talked about how to steal weapons, make explosives and put bombs in tourist sites... They were very organized." This explanation breaks with the definition of "lone wolves" officially given by the Moroccan Minister of the Interior, Abdelouafi Laftit.

Kevin testified with six other arrestees before the examining magistrate of the Salé Court of Appeal on Thursday. And the prosecution charged them with "preparing terrorist acts and training people to join the terrorist organization." The police, who found in Kevin's house propaganda of the IS, is convinced that the Spaniard was able to recruit several Swiss and English citizens of Moroccan origin to murder in the name of the Islamic State.

Although his mother, Gema, insists that there is no support for this version. "He has no Muslim friends here. They even said that he was going to rob a jewelry store in Switzerland to give the booty to the IS. His wife told me that when the police entered his house they only took a few normal reading books. The investigators came to ask me and here they found nothing," Gema says. It was precisely the Geneva police that spread Kevin's background: arrests for robberies, assaults and domestic violence between 2007 and 2013. And in 2015, according to Swiss media reports, Kevin left the country after learning that the police suspected that he had radicalized because of his strong ties with another Swiss citizen of Moroccan origin who had joined the ranks of the Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. But Kevin's case broke with that stereotype: none of his parents was Muslim. And he didn't even speak Arabic.

"He's always been in trouble. Especially because of drug issues. He was a supporter of the Servette Football Club [the Geneva team] and was always fighting and having a lot of problems at home. That he suddenly became a Muslim was very rare," explains another of his friends, surprised because in Switzerland no one knew that Kevin had been arrested in Morocco or accused of terrorism. "None of us knew anything about him since he left four years ago," adds a third friend.

And they probably wouldn't have heard from Kevin if it hadn't been for the terrifying crime that shook all of Morocco in the last week of the year.


BBM
 
Second Swiss citizen arrested in connection with Scandinavian hiker murders

A second Swiss citizen has been arrested in Morocco in connection to the murder of two female Scandinavian hikers in the Atlas mountains.

The man, a British-Swiss dual national, was arrested in Témara, north of Casablanca, on Thursday according to Moroccan newspaper 360.

His role in the murders is as yet unknown.

Swiss Federal Police have confirmed his arrest but said they had not been asked to investigate him, adding that he had been residing in Morocco and had not been in Switzerland recently.


BBM
 
ZaZara said:
In his Spanish passport his name is Kevin Zoller Guervos. He later became Abdullah.

He smoked a lot of joints, burned cars and committed several robberies. He entered a juvenile center and was given a choice between reading the Bible or the Koran. He chose the Koran.

In a statement from the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ), they said that Kevin had an "extremist and violent ideology and is suspected of teaching the killers of tourists the jihadist communication tools and training them to shoot."
Click to expand...

This perpetrator is following a very noticeable pattern of: Jail - Conversion- Jihad.

This pattern has been seen in many attacks and attempted attacks, including the Paris ones. The conversion can feature converts from outside Islam or nominal Muslims converting to fundamentalist Islam.

I imagine that prison Muslim prison chaplains are carefully screened for fundamentalism and are not introducing fundamentalist Islam into prisons. . Rather, the convert seeks out fundamentalist groups after leaving prison. This leaves no easy solutions.
 
Last edited:
Una "gran estructura" tras el crimen de turistas escandinavas en Marruecos

A "great structure" emerging in the wake of the assassination of Scandinavian tourists in Morocco

The terrorist cell dismantled in Morocco after the December assassination of two Scandinavian tourists was "a great structure" that followed the Islamic state and planned to attack a church, a Jewish pilgrimage and a modern music festival.

In an interview with Efe, Abdelhak Jiam, director of the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ, the body that centralises the fight against terrorism), also recalls the leading role played in that cell by the Hispanic-Swiss Kevin Z.G., arrested along with 21 other people, all awaiting trial.

The arrests took place in the days following December 17, when the decapitated bodies of two tourists, Danish student Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, and Norwegian Maren Ueland, 28, were discovered in a tent in a mountainous area.

Three days later, a video was released in which four people (including the three accused of being the perpetrators) appeared taking an oath of allegiance to the terrorist group Islamic State (EI) at some point prior to the assassination, all amid insults and threats to the King of Morocco and the institutions.

Jiam is convinced that the group of 22 detainees had no connection with what he calls "operational elements" of the EI, and that the only link between the Moroccans and the EI was precisely Kevin Z.G., through a friend who was a member of a Jihadist group cell in Kosovo.

Kevin trained the Moroccans in the handling of Telegram because it was supposed to be a more secure and confidential network for exchanging messages, "but above all," according to Jiam, "it was he who defined the targets of the cell."

Among those targets were a church in Marrakech (that of the Holy Martyr's, the only active church), a pilgrimage to the tomb of a Jewish saint in the city of Essaouira, west of Marrakech, and the Gnawa Music Festival in the same city, with a cosmopolitan atmosphere and an abundant European audience.

But in addition, the cell planned to commit "easy" attacks with vehicles that would run over crowds in a busy walk, in the style of those perpetrated in Nice or Barcelona, and had chosen three of the most touristic cities in the country: Marrakech, Agadir and Essaouira.

Jiam assures that this logic fits perfectly into the instructions given by the EI in recent times: to attack with the available means (sometimes knives are enough or a vehicle at full speed, he stresses) wherever possible, now that "jihad" can no longer be done in Syria after losing the "caliphate" its territorial presence.

Two other elements stand out in the dismantled cell: the oldest is an extremist imam who officiated at what Jiam calls "an anarchic mosque" in a village on the outskirts of Marrakech, and who in the past had had conflicts with the authorities for not complying with the directives of the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Kevin came into contact with this imam after a long process: after living a very conflictive adolescence, he converted to Islam in 2011 in Geneva, his hometown, and under the name of Abdalah tried to join the jihad in Syria, but opted first to make the "hijra" (Islamic emigration) to Morocco to improve his knowledge of Islam.

An imam from Marrakech put him in contact with the other radical imam and together they organised "several clandestine meetings" in which they developed their idea of "takphirism", the radical version of Islam that only accepts their beliefs and "condemns" the moderate versions of Islam.

The third capital element is the "emir" of the cell and alleged assassin of the tourists, Abdesamad J., who read the communiqué of loyalty to the EI: arrested in 2014 at Casablanca airport when he was embarking on a journey to join the jihad in Syria and served a sentence of one long year in prison, which did not serve to moderate him, since in prison he linked up with other jihadists.

In Jiam's account, two elements stand out that can be read as failures in the system: the persistence of "anarchic mosques", despite the cleaning and control operation undertaken since 2002, and the presence in the prisons of jihadist groups immune to the re-education policies undertaken by the State.

Jiam reduces the importance of these "cracks" and emphasizes the new terrorism advocated by the EI, which is no longer born and developed in mosques, but on the Internet.


BBM


According to Jeune Afrique, (via Morocco World News) the same terror cell also planned to attack individuals:


Imlil Murders Suspects Were Targeting King’s Adviser Andre Azoulay

The suspects were planning serious attacks against tourists, churches, Jewish mausoleums, and festivals.


The suspects, according to Jeune Afrique, were also targeting a series of public figures, including the King’s Jewish advisor, Andre Azoulay. They also planned to burn down Azoulay’s property in Marrakech.*

The suspects were also planning to attack Mohamed Ben Abderrahme El Mghraoui, a “moderate” Moroccan Salafi.


BBM
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

DNASolves

Who is Escambia County John Doe (1989)?

Members online

... and 81 more.
Total: 3,493 (members: 82, guests: 3,411)

Online statistics

Members online
82
Guests online
3,411
Total visitors
3,493
Totals may include hidden visitors.

Forum statistics

Threads
592,116
Messages
17,963,478
Members
228,687
Latest member
Pabo1998
Back
Top