53| Murdered In Morocco: Toubkal National Park
When we decide to travel, deciding on where to go can be exciting and still stress inducing. What are we going to do? Why are we going? Where will we stay? What will we see? What do we want to experience? Who are we traveling with? Is it safe? What do I need to be aware of?
The list of questions can be long, yet for some the answers are simple. But the expectation for all of us when we step away from our homes is that we will return. We will come home with pictures and memories, souvenirs and stories.
But that is not always the reality. And that became abundantly clear when two girls on a winter break from school very violently murdered in their tent. And for what? These two girls did nothing to provoke an attack. And yet, their deaths sparked outrage, terror, and regret.
Welcome back to tragedy with a view, i am your host kayla and this is a free solo episode, so i am on my own. And this is the first true crime episode that I am taking on for myself.
Patreon Shoutout: Diane, thank you for joining us!
This episode is coming out the day before Thanksgiving, which we celebrate here in america. I know I have listeners from other countries which is so cool but I want to take a moment to thank you for listening and being here and allow me to bring you these stories.
However you celebrate here in the united states, i hope you enjoy, whether that's going to a turkey trot or cracking open a beer and watching the football game or cooking for your entire family - or if you are not in America and you're having a normal day - it doesn’t matter what you are doing today and the rest of this week and weekend - I just hope you are having a great time.
Stepping away from that, this story is going to be focused on the area near Mount Toubkal in Morocco, which is also known as Jbel Toubkal or Jebel Toubkal. Morocco is a small county in north east Africa, which is boarded by Algeria and Western Sahara, and has the atlantic ocean as the main body of water that Morocco butts up to, but the northernmost section of water is actually the mediterranean sea.
This mountain is located in southwestern Morocca and it is the tallest peak in the Toubkal National Park at 13,671 feet or 4167 meters. This mountain is visible from the closest city which is Marrakesh that is about 39 miles or 63 km away.
Toubkal National Park encompasses an area of about 146 square miles or 93,000 acres of wilderness and much of this area includes the high atlas mountains. There are 8 mountains that climb past the 12,000 feet or 3660 m in elevation in this range and the landscape surrounding the range contains cliffs, gorges, plateaus and valleys as well as a deep rooted history as can be displayed by the very few prehistoric drawings left that have not be vandalized.
The mountain range actually runs kind of differently from the ranges that we are used to here in the America’s which mostly run North to South. This range runs from the south west, where it meets with the atlantic ocean, and travels northeast.
Mount Toubkal is unlike the other peaks in the High Atlas Mountains as instead of it being made up of sedimentary rocks like the mountains surrounding it, this mountain is Mount Toubkal is made up of volcanic remnants and has a very unique and sharp crest which leads up from narrow valleys.
To the south of mount Toubkal is Lac D’Ifni (Lack Diff-in-ee) which is a small lake. To the west there is a ridge that takes you to the Tizi N’Ouanoums (Tizz-ee Noun-oms) pass that is 12,021 feet in elevation or 3,664 meters and if you continue on this ridge, it will bring you to kind of a second mountain called Toubkal West, which creates kind of a false summit for Mount Toubkal.
And because of the mountain’s geographical makeup coupled with the fact that it is the tallest peak, makes it a popular tourist destination and you can actually hire guides to take you on the trek to the summit as well as porters to carry your items.
This is an extremely popular area, and because of the high number of people coming and going, When Louisa, known as Lulu by her friends, and Maren decided to take a month-long vacation during their winter break from university, it was to Mount Toubkal they decided to go.
Louisa Vesterager (Ves-purr-a-ger) Jespersen (Jess-purr-sen), or Lulu, was 24 years old and grew up in Denmark and met Maren (mare-n) Ueland (ooland), who was 28 and from Norway at University of South Eastern Norway where they were not only studying together but roommates, where they were studying outdoor leadership, culture and ecophilosophy with the goal to become guides for excursions in the wilderness.
Ecophilosophy is the study of approaching nature with the knowledge of not just the area and how to best support the native wilderness, but also how to support the culture of that specific area as well.
Lulu grew up in Ikast Denmark and was extremely passionate about the outdoors and traveling. She traveled in Argentina, Peru, Australia, and Norway and had also applied for the Fjallraven polar expedition in 2017 and 2018.
Lulu
The Fjallraven polar expedition is a 186 mile or 300 km journey through the arctic which is put on by the Swedish apparel company, Fjallraven, With the assistance of 180 sled dogs and experts, participants would be able to get a true understanding of what life in the arctic circle looks like.
Lulu and Maren became friends quickly and decided to take a trip to Morocco during their winter break in December of 2018, and Lulu was kind of the driving force for this adventure. She loved to explore and experience new areas and wasn’t concerned with getting off course as she made her way toward her goal.
Maren, however, was a little hesitant at first about this trip, but finally Lulu convinced her and Maren decided they would go to Morocco together.
Lulu made a post on facebook in November, about a month before they left, asking if anyone had any advice or suggestions for the two girls as they made their way through Morocco and to the highest peak of Mount Toubkal.
Maren
While Morocco is generally considered a safe place for travelers, terrorist attacks are not unheard of. In 2011, 17 people were killed in a bombing at a restaurant and 1600 people have traveled to Morocco in order to join the Islamic State, or ISIS and fight in the Syrian Civil War.
At first, Moroccan authorities just ignored the people claiming alliance with ISIS, but then they realized that some of these people were returning to Morocco and committing terrorist attacks. Thus, the Bureau Central D’Investigation Judiciaire or BCIJ was formed to monitor these activities.
And this is because there are communities within Morocco that rely on tourists coming through and spending money in their towns. If tourists begin to feel that Morocco is too much of a risk, they will stop coming to the area. So not only do the citizens of Morocco, but the government as well feel that there is a huge importance in making sure terrorist activities are managed and that these areas are safe.
On December 9, 2018, Lulu and Maren’s plane landed in Morocco and the first item on their list was to climb Mount Toubkal so they made their way in that direction, but the girls took a less than direct approach. Again, they had been planning a month-long trip, so Lulu and Maren felt like they had plenty of time to take in the sights and they didn’t really need to rush.
It took the girls 5 days to get to their destination, so on December 16, the girls arrived in a remote area near the base of Mount Toubkal. They set up their brightly colored tent in an isolated area to give themselves some privacy from the other tourists, and settled in for the night.
It typically takes two days to hike to Mount Toubkal, so it is not alarming at all that these girls would need to camp overnight, and from what we understand of these girls, especially Lulu, camping seems like it would be their preferred way to stay.
And to be a little more specific, they were taking the trail toward Mount Toubkal. They had not arrived at the mountain yet, between the small mountain town of Imlil and Mount Toubkal it usually takes about 5-6 hours to get from one destination to the other.
They were roughly 6 miles or 10km from Imlil, and had taken all the appropriate safety precautions that they could prior to leaving their home, such as leaving a detailed itinerary with their parents before they left.
But, that night everything would change.
On December 17, a pair of French hikers were heading their way toward Mount Toubkal, and they had woken up extremely early. They wanted to avoid the crowds so they were one of the firsts on the trail, if not the first. And as they made their way down the trail from Imlil, they came across a brightly colored tent that appeared to be trashed, and then they saw a body.
This body was outside of the tent, and was clearly not that of a living person, as the woman’s head had been severed from the rest of her body. When they looked toward the tent, they could see the flap was open and that there was a second person inside the tent, also covered in blood.
They ran back to Imlil to report what they found, and quickly, 4 police helicopters arrived in the area to block off the scene.
They found that Lulu had been violently attacked, being stabbed a total of 23 times before she was decapitated, and dragged out of the tent.
Maren was stabbed 7 times, and her body was left inside of the girls tent. Now Maren also had stab wounds to her neck, which indicate that whoever committed this crime tried to behead her, but was unable to for whatever reason.
Investigators, additionally, found that both girls had been sexually assaulted.
On December 21, Lulu and Maren’s remains were flown to Copenhagen in Denmark where they could be returned to their families and laid to rest.
Lulu’s funeral was held in her hometown in Denmark on January 12, 2019 and the prime minister of Denmark actually showed up at her funeral.
Maren’s funeral was held on January 21, in her hometown in Norway and both the Norwegian Minister of Health and a Moroccan Ambassador would be in attendance. Which just goes to show how big of a deal these murders were.
It was at Maren’s funeral where the Minister of Health, Bent Hoie said “we must continue to climb the mountains and paddle the rivers. We must continue to move freely and fearlessly into the world. Like maren did.”
Now, it did not take long for authorities to find suspects, mostly because Abderrahim Khayali had left his photo ID in Lulu and Maren’s tent. He was apprehended on the public bus the following morning, December 18, and once they started arresting people, the floodgates opened.
Khayali confessed to authorities what happened and Abdessamad Ejjoud, Younes Ouaziyad, and Rachid Afatti were arrested not long after. It was very quickly discovered that Ejjoud was the leader of this group and that the 4 had agreed to attack two foreign hikers as a terrorist act.
However, Khayali, while he denied his involvement in the attack, he admitted that he hiked in with the other three. He claims that he left the trail before any violence began, and started heading back toward Imlil. In other words, he claims that he bailed on the act of violence against Lulu and Maren. But, again, his ID was found in the girls tent.
Authorities found that Ejjoud, Ouaziyad, Khayali, and Afatti had been stalking tourists in the area for 4 days before finally finding Lulu and Maren and declaring them their targets. Why Lulu and Maren? They were not with guides, making their crimes way easier to commit.
In fact, while they had been staking out the area, and trying to identify their target, a tour guide would approach them and talk to the men because they seemed to be lost. Ejjoud played off this encounter and while at first the tour guide thought that these men were just a little weird, as soon as he heard about the attack on the two girls, he came forward to authorities with the information that he had about the men.
And the descriptions he gave matched Ejjoud, Ouaziyad, Khayali and Afatti.
Ejjoud, who was 25 years old and worked as a street vendor was identified as the main aggressor in the murders of Lulu and Maren. Ouaziyad, who was 27 years old was also there, stabbing the girls to their deaths before Ejjoud decapitated Lulu. From what we can tell - Ouaiyad tried to decapitate Maren, but again - and maybe it was his conscious getting the better of him or maybe it was because he found the act more gruesome that he thought - but he could not complete this task.
And we know this thanks to the actionsof Afatti.
In a really sick twist, Afatti, who was 33, decided that to show proof of their actions to ISIS, he would record the entire attack on his cell phone. ISIS supporters, “somehow”, got their hands on this video - probably because Afatti himself began to send it to others as soon as he was able to - and then they began to share the video too. Not just with each other, but online.
When people originally saw this video they couldn’t believe that it was real - but unfortunately, Norwegian police would get their hands on the video being shared and found that it was in fact a real video of the attack on Lulu and Maren.
The saddest part about this is that Maren can be heard screaming in terror as she and Lulu are attacked, and one man can be heard yelling “This is for Syria, here are the heads of your gods” and another man can be heard saying “This is in revenge for our brothers”.
And this is enraging. These two girls, who only came to the area to explore and take in what life had to offer them were viciously attacked - and for what? They were not committing crimes. They were not being disrespectful or harmful or hateful. The sheer fact that they existed and didn’t have a guide with them was enough to warrant the attack, in the mind of Ejjoud, Afatti, and Ouaziyad.
But why would they have a guide with them? This was precisely what they were studying for - what they were trying to eventually earn a living in. And these men had the audacity to believe that attacking these two girls was an act of revenge and that their actions would be honored.
Because of the video making it into the hands of investigators from Denmark, Denmark would send those same investigators to Morocco to help in the investigation.
They found that the 4 men had been stalking women since December 14, two days prior to declaring Lulu and Maren as their targets. They had been telling people in the area that they were just there to have a picnic. They were here in this area doing the tourist thing too.
Eyewitnesses said that they saw the men set up their tent near the girls tent and that the 4 men looked homeless. While many who encountered the men felt uneasy, no one had an interaction with them weird enough to report them. Because up until the attack on Lulu and Maren, they hadn’t actually done anything - at least while others were watching- to warrant a report.
On May 2, 2019, an 11 week trial began that would reveal more and more details along with the reasons these men decided to commit this horrendous crime.
These men acted in the hopes that it would draw attention from ISIS which they pledged alliance to in a different video - but they were never able to communicate with ISIS, and ISIS also never acknowledged them. Their hope was that their actions would render them heroes and they would become idolized.
And I would like to note that I don’t know enough about ISIS to understand if their lack of acknowledgement is normal, but I would venture to guess that these 4 men were looking for approval and the lack of attention from ISIS or other supporters caused these men to think they had to do something big.
Ejjoud would admit that he had killed and then behead one of the girls, of course he does not know which one, but we know this to be Lulu. And of course, after the fact when he is facing the consequences of his actions, when it finally dawns on him that ISIS will not come save him like the hero he wants to be - he regrets what he did.
But this isn't his first rodeo, which would imply that this regret is simply a ploy. In 2015, Ejjoud was released from a prison sentence in Morocco when he was caught trying to join ISIS in Syria.
In a turn of events, these three were found to have no contact with ISIS Militants, they were not in communication with anyone in combat zones, and ISIS made a statement that they did not provoke these actions or the killings of these two girls. And as many of us know, ISIS likes to claim their violent acts.
But it wasn’t just these four that would end up being arrested for the crimes. This would lead to several others, a total of 24 men were arrested and charged with a variety of terrorists acts, though Ejjoud, Ouaziyad and Afatti were the only three charged with murder.
All of the men were of low income and low education backgrounds. Kevin Zoller Guervos was the only Morrocan who was on trial and he was charged with teaching the others how to send encrypted messages and how to use weapons.
Others were charged with forming this terrorist cell within Morocco, and most were sentenced to between 5 and 30 years in jail for not just forming this gang, but also committing terrorist acts.
And as all this information came to light, people online started petitions for Ejjoud, Ouzaiyad and Afatti to be executed and they were in fact given a death sentence.
The executions will be the first in Morocco since 1993 - not because executions were outlawed, but because executions just weren’t handed out for the crimes that were being committed. As of this recording, the three are still waiting for execution.
Abderrahmane Khayali, one of the men who was charged with terrorist crimes, and the man whose ID was found in Lulu and Maren’s tent but claimed to have left the area before anything occurred, was not charged for the butchering of Lulu or Maren. But still, he committed suicide on February 28, 2023, as he waited for execution for his crimes as well.
The government of Denmark got involved in these trials and charged 14 of the 24 arrested for sharing the video footage of the murders.
Further, the Moroccan authorities were hounded by the attorney Lulu’s family hired because all of these men were supposed to be being watched. They all had something to indicate potential terrorist actions, and yet the Moroccan government failed. Had they not - Lulu and Maren just might still be alive.
My heart breaks for these two beautiful and young women and their families. They were just trying to do what so many of us dream of and that is to travel the world, experience different cultures, and do so safely so that they could return to the ones they love.
Instead, their families are left with pain and grief that digs deeper than many of us can imagine. It wasn’t just Lulu and Maren’s lives that were taken, but it was all of their potential and it robbed parents of being able to watch their children grow and accomplish goals.
As a parent, this story is heartbreaking. It is beyond reason. And as this episode is being released only a couple of weeks from the 6th anniversary of when this attack occurred, I would like to send my condolences to the families and friends of Lulu and Maren. They seemed like bright and incredible young women and they did not deserve this.
Everyone, thank you for listening. If you could take a moment to leave a positive review or rating on whatever platform you listen on, I would really appreciate it. If you are celebrating Thanksgiving, I hope you have a great time and have great stories and memories to tell.
Until next week!
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49029505.amp
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Louisa_Vesterager_Jespersen_and_Maren_Ueland
https://www.thedailybeast.com/isis-blamed-for-murder-of-scandinavian-women-on-camera-in-morocco
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/12/23/africa/morocco-scandinavian-tourist-deaths
https://national-parks.org/morocco/toubkal
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