Hard to believe: Those four asylum seekers suspected of raping a 16-year-old girl in Linz on 30 March were released from pre-trial detention after a review of a remand in custody ! The Linz Regional Court did not provide a reason for this decision, referring to the ongoing proceedings.
A spokeswoman of the public prosecutor’s office told the Austrian press agency APA that the analysis of various camera recordings in the area of the station showed that the girl had come to the main station by tram in the late afternoon that day and, after a quick glance at her mobile phone, had approached a group of young men in which one of the suspects was standing. The camera recordings, however, are without sound, and what happened next can also no longer be seen. No one claims to have observed the later victim being forcibly dragged to the scene of the crime, a former mail distribution centre near the railway station.
The 16-year-old is said to have been in contact with one of the suspects via a social network days before the crime, but the exact content of the conversation could not be established. The victim will be questioned in an interrogation after Easter.
The four suspects, a 14-year-old Iranian and three 15-year-old Afghans, have so far denied the rape – two say the sex took place voluntarily, one only wants to have stood by, the fourth remains silent.
The court’s decision is incomprehensible to outsiders because it is simply inconceivable that a 16-year-old girl, even if she voluntarily accompanies a few young boys for whatever reason, would voluntarily lie down on the cold floor near the emergency exit of a refugee shelter to have group sex with them. In addition, the police officers who happened to be looking for a toilet had caught the four suspects in an unambiguous pose and they had all fled. Consensual sex looks different.
These and other similarly incomprehensible decisions of Austrian soft justice create the impression among the population that migrants in this country obviously enjoy carte blanche for criminal acts of all kinds, while Austrians are already punished if they wear their face masks wrongly in the underground. This is a catastrophic signal that diminishes any trust in our justice system and also leads to increasing resentment and disaffection among the police, who often risk their lives in the hunt for criminals.
The softer you are, the more they get brazen. They would have threatened the judge or given money.