An ISIS fanatic who was sentenced to death over the gruesome beheading of two Scandinavian hikers in Morocco has hanged himself inside his prison cell.
The body of convicted terrorist Abderrahim Khayali, 36, was discovered by guards at the prison in Oujda, a city in northeast Morocco, on Tuesday morning.
Khayali was among four convicted ISIS militants jailed and sentenced to death in 2019 over the horrific murders of Norwegian Maren Ueland, 28, and 24-year-old Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, from Denmark, in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains. Per DailyMail.
The group’s suspected ringleader Abdessamad Ejjoud and two others – Younes Ouaziyad and Rachid Afatti – had filmed themselves beheading the two hikers inside their tent in December 2018 before posting the horrific footage online in a case that shocked the world.
Khayali had left his fellow ISIS fanatics before they murdered the two women, who had been on a backpacking trip. He claimed during his trial that he had left ‘out of regret’.
Khayali, who had tried to help the militants flee, had also appeared alongside the three killers in a video in which all four pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in front of a black and white ISIS flag.
According to DailyMail, he was originally sentenced to life in prison but the sentence was changed to execution after he appeared.
Ejjoud, Ouaziyad and Afatti were also sentenced to death by firing squad for beheading the two hikers in 2019. The court also handed jail terms to 19 people convicted as accomplices.
Ejjoud, an underground imam, had confessed at a previous hearing to beheading one of the women and Younes Ouaziyad, a 27-year-old carpenter, the other, while Rachid Afatti, 33, had videoed the murders on his mobile phone.
Khayali, a plumber, had accompanied the three killers but left the scene before the murders.
During their trial, the four ISIS fanatics had said, ‘May God forgive us’ while one added: ‘There is no God but Allah’ when the judge asked them for their final statements before giving his verdict.
The sentencing marked the first time since 1993 that Morocco has handed out the death penalty.
