9 Iraq migrants ‘raped teacher, 28, in New Year horror attack’
The victim was allegedly ‘taken away’ from a female friend she was drinking with by four men and led to a flat where five others lay in wait to join the ‘humiliating and agonising’ attack.
Despite pleading ‘No, I don’t want this’, the 28-year-old was raped by the men one-by-one in a two-hour ordeal, the judge was told.
Afterwards, one of them escorted her to a toilet in the flat where he took a selfie with her on his mobile phone. Two of the men later took the sobbing victim to a nearby tram stop where they tried to soothe her by saying in English: ‘Don’t cry.’
The woman was hospitalised after the attack in central Vienna and still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The assault in the early hours of January 1, 2016 happened around the same time as hundreds of unrelated sexual assaults during New Year’s celebrations in Cologne, Germany, which were blamed largely on men of North African origin.
One of the defendants in the Vienna attack has pleaded guilty to rape. The others deny assaulting her and feel ‘ no guilt’ despite DNA evidence, the court heard. One claimed the woman had been ‘offered’ to them by relatives while another said she was willing. The defendants, aged 22 to 45 and all related, were among 90,000 people who applied for asylum in Austria in 2015. At the time of the attack, five of the men had refugee status while the asylum applications of the other four were still pending. The victim, who is
‘Really drunk on vodka’
German, was visiting a friend in Vienna. Shortly before midnight, they wandered into the city centre to celebrate the arrival of 2016. They were drinking in a bar called Cactus around 3am when the victim’s friend noticed she had vanished. Another drinker said some men she had been talking with had ‘taken her away’.
The victim, said to be drunk, described finding herself naked on a bed and being assaulted by the men. She yelled at them, in German: ‘No, I don’t want this’ and then in English: ‘Listen to me, just a little bit.’
Her alleged attackers spoke only in Arabic. She was assaulted in the dark so she could not identify them, her lawyer Karina Fehringer said.
Medical experts said she was raped multiple times. She was too fragile to face her alleged attackers at the District Court of Vienna. Only one man, named only as Mohamed Al-A, 31, admitted his role in the attack. He wept in court, saying he did not drink due to his Muslim faith but had made an exception and got ‘ really drunk’ on vodka. He added: ‘This act is a crime in Iraq.’
He was in the Cactus bar with Nazar Al- J, Mohammed Al-T, and Alaa Al- J, who took the victim back to the apartment. The others – Hader Al-A, Mustafa Al- J, Nael Al- J, Marwan Al-J and Sabah Al-J – allegedly lay in wait for her there.
They face up to 15 years each in jail if convicted. The trial continues.