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Danish authorities are struggling to ban the video showing the murder of Danish tourist Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and her Norwegian companion, Maren Ueland, according to Danish outlet BT.
According to the outlet, in large parts of the country, the police have received reports that killing video from Morocco is being shared. For instance, pupils from Vejgård Østre Skole on the outskirts of Aalborg had seen the footage. The school subsequently spoke to all pupils in the seventh and eighth grade about it.
A large group of people around the country may have broken the law once they have seen and shared the video.
This is what Kirsten Dyrmann, a public prosecutor in Viborg, said. In agreement with the Attorney General, she has been tasked with investigating the matter and its scope.
“It is our impression that sharing videos like this can be a criminal offence, so I would urge people to refrain from doing so,” Dyrmann told BT.
Police appeared to have received a large amount of reports, since Dyrmann said the following:
“This is a not insignificant number, and therefore it is important that we get coordinated that everyone runs in the right direction,” she said.
“It will be our job to find out how it should be investigated. But first and foremost, the task is to investigate whether it is punishable and, if so, according to which provisions,” she continued.
Although it is not yet clear whether it is illegal to see and share the video at all, the specialists of the National Police Cyber Crime Center (NC3) are intensely working to prevent the spread of the video.
“We’ve done and still do what we can to prevent the spread of this horrible video. If you receive the video, we recommend deleting it immediately,” NC3 leader Claus Birkelyng said.
Jespersen (24) and Ueland (28) were brutally murdered during their trip to the Atlas Mountains, near the village of Imlil en route to Toubkal, North Africa’s highest peak as well as a popular hiking and trekking destination.
As of December 26th, 19 people were arrested in connection to the murders. The four main suspects, aged between 25 and 30 years, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a video made three days before the bodies were found, but without agreeing this in advance with any foreign group, police and domestic intelligence spokesman Boubker Sabik said.
Sabik described the four men as “lone wolves,” adding that “the crime was not coordinated with Islamic State.”
According to unnamed sources, the fifteen other people that were arrested allegedly have connections to the four killers, but no further details were provided.
A Swiss national was also reportedly arrested. Morocco’s Central Bureau for Judicial Investigations (CBJI) said the man was thought to have recruited “Moroccan and sub-Saharan nationals” to carry out attacks against foreigners as well as security forces “in order to take hold of their service weapons.”
Sputnik reported that the gruesome video was sent to friends and relatives of the two victims. Citing Danish Media, Sputnik claimed that “Jespersen’s mother and other relatives even had to deactivate their Facebook accounts after being spammed with the grisly video from fake accounts and bots.”
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