A Moroccan antiterrorist court on Thursday (July 18th) sentenced to death three men for the murder of two Scandinavian tourists decapitated in December in Morocco on behalf of the Islamic State organization.

The first, Abdessamad Ejjoud, a 25-year-old street vendor, confessed to organizing the deadly expedition with two companions, Younes Ouaziyad, a 27-year-old carpenter, and Rachid Afatti, 33, who had filmed the scene.

Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, a 24-year-old Danish student, and her friend Maren Ueland, a 28-year-old Norwegian, were killed while camping on an isolated site in the High Atlas Mountains, a mountainous region in southern Morocco. hikers.

>> To read: Morocco: the "terrorist track" envisaged after the murder of two Scandinavian tourists

Even though death sentences are still handed down in Morocco, a moratorium on executions has been applied de facto since 1993 and the abolition of the death penalty is debated. The three men sentenced to death have in any case remained unmoved by the sentence.

In this highly followed trial opened in early May, 24 men suspected of being linked to these murders and / or belonging to a jihadist cell were tried. The other 21 defendants received sentences ranging from five years in prison to life imprisonment.

Hispano-Switzerland sentenced for "terrorist gang"

Among them is a Hispano-Swiss convert to Islam, Kevin Zoller Guervos, sentenced to 20 years in prison for "forming a terrorist band". In particular, he was accused of teaching the main suspects to use encrypted messaging and to have them "trained in shooting". He has always claimed his innocence.

The court also sentenced the three men convicted of murder, as well as one of their accomplices, to pay two million dirhams (190,000 euros) in compensation to Maren Ueland's parents.

But he refused the request of the family of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen who claimed 10 million dirhams (930,000 euros) to the Moroccan state for its "moral responsibility".

"The fairest thing would be to give these beasts the death penalty they deserve, I ask you," Louisa's mother implored in a letter read by her lawyer at the previous hearing.

"We will appeal to the administrative court to claim compensation," said Khaled El Fataoui, the lawyer for Louisa's family. "The most important thing for us is not money, it's (...) condemning the guilty parties, and the mother will be relieved to learn the convictions," he added.

"There is no God but God, forgive me"

Petitions claiming the death penalty for the two tourists' murderers had been circulating on the Internet, the crime provoking great emotion.

Coming from modest backgrounds, with a very low level of education, most of the defendants lived through precarious work in inner-city slums of Marrakech (center).

"There is no God but God ... forgive me," the brain of Abdessamad Ejjoud, in his final words before the deliberation, had launched. He presented himself at the hearing wearing the traditional Salafist dress, wearing a beard and a "kufi", a white cap screwed on his head.

The radicalized street vendor had disseminated images of decapitation and a declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State organization on social networks, which never claimed the double murder.

His companions in the deadly expedition - who had confessed their role - also called for "God's forgiveness". Twenty other defendants had however claimed their innocence, condemning the double murder and demanding a fair trial.

With AFP