A video that allegedly shows the killing of a Scandinavian university student in a remote part of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains is likely authentic, Norwegian police said Friday.
Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service has been investigating the footage circulating on social media. “There is no concrete evidence indicating the video is not real,” it said.
Four men have been detained in Morocco, and authorities there consider the killings of two female students to be a terrorist act. The women from Norway and Denmark had been hiking, and their bodies were discovered Monday with stab wounds in their necks.
Commenting on another video in which the four suspects appear to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State group, the NCIS said that “neither Norway nor Denmark was mentioned in the video, nor was there anything specific about what action they should perform.”
The women have been identified as 24-year-old Louisa Vesterager Jespersen of Denmark and 28-year-old Norwegian citizen Maren Ueland. They lived in southern Norway, where they attended university.
The NCIS said it was trying to map the women’s activities before their departure for Imlil village, a frequent starting point for treks to Mount Toubkal, North Africa’s highest peak. The women were found about 10 kilometers from the center of the village.
Morocco is generally considered safe for tourists but has been routing out Islamic extremists for years.
