decision to leave the country along with his wife Nora and his daughter Aisha who was born earlier that year. He went to Morocco for the second time, settled down with his family and changed his name to Ali Ahmed el Gheseiri. Two years later, in 1930, his wife took the decision to return with her child to Denmark. Knud Holmboe, however, developed a plan to travel from Morocco across the Sahara to reach Egypt. It was this journey that made him famous. Driving through the desert in a 1929 Chevrolet, he left the beaten track to discover the communities and landscape of the desert. Holmboe was shocked to observe European violence against the indigenous populations of the North African colonies. In Libya, he witnessed the shocking treatment of the Libyan Muslim population by Italian colonial troops. Holmboe wrote everything down and many photographs documenting the observations he had made. His activities did not remain unnoticed by the Italians and in the eastern city of Derna, he was arrested and kicked out of Libya. In Egypt, he tried to organize resistance against the Italian colonial powers in Libya. However, after the Italian ambassador had informed the British authorities in Egypt, Holmboe was arrested again and thrown into prison in Cairo. After a month, he was sent home to Denmark. Back in Denmark, he produced a book in 1931 based on these travel experiences, entitled Desert Encounter () condemning the colonial overseers. The book was published both in Denmark, in many other European countries and the USA, but immediately banned in Italy. The Italian colonial powers were outraged at the suggestion that the Muslim population of Libya was being subjected to genocide. Last years and death After completing his book, Knud Holmboe started on his hajj, to Makkah in May 1931. Holmboe bought a camel in Amman and travelled to Aqaba (in modern Jordan) where he waited for an entry permit into Ibn Saud ́s territory. On 11 October 1931, he left on his camel towards the Saudi Arabian border spending the night in the vicinity of the Haql oasis. The next day he was attacked by a local Bedouin tribe on the road between al-Haql and Humayda. He managed to escape overnight, but was found the next day and shot on 13 October 1931. The circumstances of the death of Knud Holmboe were never fully explained. While it has been