A brutal ISIS member who was involved in the beheading of two female Western tourists in Morocco has been found dead in his cell.
Morocco’s prison service said on Tuesday that Abderrahim Khayali, 36, who was sentenced to death over the 2018 beheadings, had killed himself.
“This morning, (the prisoner) at Oujda prison committed suicide,” the General Directorate for Prisons said in a statement.
The prison official confirmed that the man who killed himself was Mr Khayali, Agence France Presse reported.
Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, a 24-year-old Danish student, and her friend Maren Ueland, a 28-year-old Norwegian, were brutally killed on December 17, 2018, while camping in the Atlas mountains.
Rachid Afatti, Younes Ouaziyad and the suspected ringleader, Abdessamad Ejjoud carried out the attack while Mr Khayali accompanied three assailants in the horror incident but left the scene before the murders happened.
He still received a life sentence for his involvement and also appeared alongside the killers in a video in which all four pledged allegiance to Daesh.
He was also found guilty of trying to help the men flee.
Jespersen and Ueland's bodies were found by two French walkers near the tourist town of Imlil, where the pair had been holidaying.
An investigation by the Washington Post revealed horrifying details of the attack which happened in the dark, just after midnight.
Mr Ouazid commanded them to come out of their tent and as he reached for the zip he swung his knife at Jespersen’s hand and sliced it.
The investigation continues: "The men stabbed through the tent’s nylon fabric at the panicked figures inside. Jespersen managed to break out of the tent and tried to run, only to be subdued with multiple stab wounds.
"Affati, aiming the camera, pinned her head to the ground with his foot while Ejjoud attacked her with a knife. 'This is the revenge for our brothers in Deir al-Zour,' he said, referring to a province in eastern Syria where the Islamic State had sustained heavy losses.
"The defendants had stabbed them to death in their sleeping bags and then beheaded them."
“My life was destroyed the moment that two policemen came to my door on December 17 to announce my daughter’s death,” the mother of 24-year-old Louisa Vesterager Jespersen wrote in the letter, read out in court in front of the defendants.
Mr Khayali was originally sentenced to life in prison but the sentence was changed to execution after he appealed.
Although the death penalty remains legal in Morocco, there have been no executions there since 1993 because of a moratorium and the issue of capital punishment is a matter of political debate.
