Swiss-Spanish man among new suspects brought before Morocco judge in slain hikers case

A Morocco prosecutor on Thursday brought seven new suspects including a Spanish-Swiss man before a Rabat anti-terror judge in connection with the murder of two Scandinavian women in the Atlas Mountains.

Published: 3 January 2019 18:39 CET

Swiss-Spanish man among new suspects brought before Morocco judge in slain hikers case

FADEL SENNA / AFP

The prosecution asked that the suspects be investigated for “forming a gang to prepare and carry out terrorist acts, premeditated assistance to perpetrators of terrorist acts and training people to join a terrorist organisation”, Rabat's attorney general said.

The prosecutor called on the judge to place the suspects in pre-trial detention.

Danish student Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, and 28-year-old Norwegian Maren Ueland were found dead at an isolated hiking spot south of Marrakesh on December 17.

The two women were beheaded, authorities have said.

Fifteen people, including the four main suspects, were brought before the judge on Sunday over their alleged links to the double homicide, labelled a “terrorist” act by Rabat.

The Spanish-Swiss man in Thursday's group had been living in Morocco and was detained in Marrakesh over alleged links to some of the suspects.

He subscribed to “extremist ideology”, according to Morocco's central office for judicial investigations.

The four main suspects were also arrested in Marrakesh and belonged to a cell inspired by Islamic State group ideology, Morocco's counter-terror chief Abdelhak Khiam told AFP.

None of the four had contact with IS members in Syria or Iraq, he said.

The head of the suspected cell is 25-year-old street vendor Abdessamad Ejjoud, according to investigators.

He was identified in a video filmed a week before the double-murder, in which the four main suspects pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to authorities.

The killings have shaken Norway, Denmark and Morocco. Another video circulated on social networks allegedly showed the murder of one of the tourists.

Morocco, which relies heavily on tourism income, suffered a jihadist attack in 2011, when a bomb blast at a cafe in Marrakesh's famed Jamaa El Fna Square killed 17 people, mostly European tourists.

An attack in the North African state's financial capital Casablanca killed 33 people in 2003.

Two victims suffered serious wounds, police said. The attacker was also in hospital being treated for injuries that investigators said were self-inflicted.

The man was “believed to be of foreign origin” and was aged about 40, police said in a statement which added that he was thought to have acted alone.

All of the injured remained hospitalised late Wednesday.

Armed with “sharpened or pointed” metal weapons, the man first lashed out at a passer-by at the railway station in the town of 12,000 people in the Aargau canton, about 60 kilometres (38 miles) west of Zurich, police said.

He then wounded several people seemingly at random before entering a house, police added.

Among those attacked were two teachers from the Zofingen cantonal school, the institution’s director, Patrick Strossler, told 20minuten.ch news website.

The Aargauer Zeitung newspaper quoted one man as saying his pregnant wife had been among those attacked. She was cut in the face but her life was not threatened.

After two hours of negotiations with a specialised team, the man was arrested in the house, police said. The suspect had injured himself and was taken to hospital, said Bernhard Graser, a police spokesman.

Graser told the Zofinger Tagblatt newspaper that the attacker’s injuries were self-inflicted.

Police have called for witnesses to share video or photos that may be useful for their investigation.

Images shown by Aargauer Zeitung showed a large deployment of police and emergency vehicles. The security forces had assault rifles and bullet-proof vests.

A police helicopter landed on a nearby sports field, causing the local youth football team to cut short a training session, the newspaper said.