Outrage After Swedish TV Downplays Gruesome ISIS Beheadings, Threatens Prison For Sharing Video

Swedish state broadcaster SVT has outraged viewers after they ran an article claiming that the gruesome ISIS-inspired murder of two Scandinavian girls in Morocco “had nothing to do with Islam,” before warning Swedes that sharing a graphic beheading video of the incident could result in up to four years of imprisonment.

Maren Ueland, 28, of Norway and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, of Denmark were murdered on Dec.17 while backpacking in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco. Both girls were stabbed multiple times, while one of them was beheaded on video. The culprits can then be seen pledging allegiance to the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

The ISIS fanatics gloated about the killing – while images of the killing were posted to the Facebook page of Ueland’s mother, and the video was sent via Private Message to Ms. Jesperson’s friends, according to the Daily Mail.

The clip, in which a suspected ISIS terrorist shouts ‘it’s Allah’s will’, was also sent to friends of Ms Jespersen via ‘private messenger’, it has been claimed.

It has since been revealed that horrific images of the slain tourists have been posted on the Facebook page of Ms Ueland’s mother Irene. Some Moroccans bizarrely posted the images in a misguided bid to express sympathy along with calls for the killers to be executed.

Earlier, it was claimed that footage itself had been sent to friends of Ms Jespersen. While it is not clear exactly who sent them the footage, there will be strong suspicions it would have been from warped ISIS sympathisers. –Daily Mail

A total of 19 people have been arrested in connection with the murders, according to The Washington Post, after the hikers’ bodies were discovered in their tent in a remote area of the Atlas mountains.

During a Christmas Eve report on the murders, SVT made no mention of the fact that one of the women was beheaded, nor the ISIS link, calling their injuries “knife damage,” yet warned viewers of the legal risks of sharing the video of the incident.

“We have got very good legislation in place called unlawful infringement. This law is aimed at just this kind of case when someone spreads information or images of somebody in a vulnerable position,” said former prosecutor Sven-Erik Alhem to SVT.

A subsequent written version of the murders on SVT‘s website does mention a link to Islamic terrorism.

According to one Twitter user (translated): “To sum up SVT’s coverage of the Muslim terrorist attack in Morocco and Daesh ‘warriors’: 1) You’ll be sent to prison if you spread the beheading film, you racist Nazi! 2) Daesh warriors have returned home to Sweden 3) They died of knife wounds, sort of 4) The murder in Morocco has nothing to do with Islam!”

“I myself would never watch such a film, let alone share it. But now we are more upset about the crime of proliferation than the crime of beheading,” wrote another Twitter user (translated).

Another user ridiculed SVT, tweeting: “225 years ago Marie Antoinette suffered ‘knife damage to her neck’ during the French Revolution.”

Journalist Ingrid Carlqvist noted (translated): “Have now seen this very strange report. A new law that has been created to protect, say, rape victims from having films of the crime spread, is now being applied to the beheading clip of the Danish and Norwegian girls in Morocco.”