A North African migrant minor has been indicted for the act of raping two separate women under the threat of a weapon on Oct. 28 and Nov. 5 in the city of Lille.
The suspect, arrested on Thursday, Nov. 10, is a 16-year-old unaccompanied minor from North Africa, according to a police source who spoke to French newspaper Le Figaro. A judicial inquiry has now been opened in the case.
The rapes were committed on two Lille students who were both returning from a party in the evening, with both attacks occurring in a narrow isolated street in La Voix du Nord in the Wazemmes district.
The attacker used the same method of attack in both cases. He drove up to the victim with a scooter and threatened them with a knife. He then forced them to follow him before he raped and beat them. He also ended up stealing their mobile phones and jewelry before fleeing.
Police responded by deploying large numbers of officers in the Wazemmes district. Lille Urban Security investigators feared that this individual with a disturbing profile would re-offend. The suspect ended up being apprehended on Thursday, Nov. 10, by the police officers of the interdepartmental service for securing public transport (SISTC).
France has been beset with a number of public rapes by migrants as of late, including the rape of 12-year-old Paris girl Lola by an Algerian migrant with deportation orders. Earlier this year, a Tunisian migrant raped an English tourist directly on a street in France. In August of this year, a North African migrant was arrested for raping an American tourist in a Paris public toilet while her partner waited outside. Last month, a Congolese migrant attempted to rape a 24-year-old French woman because he did not have enough money for a prostitute, telling police, “I wanted to have a beautiful White (woman).”
Such cases have been seen across Europe, with Girogia Meloni recently posting a video of a migrant raping a woman directly on the streets of Italy in the middle of the day, which sparked international headlines.
The trend of migrants being vastly overrepresented in sexual assaults and other serious crimes is present across Europe; however, pointing this out can sometimes be dangerous. For example, in Sweden, two respected academic researchers have been prosecuted for publishing a study detailing the massive overrepresentation of foreigners in rape cases.
France has also seen a dramatic increase in murders and rapes in recent years, which has coincided with a dramatic rise in immigration from North Africa, Africa, and the Middle East. According to the French interior minister’s office, 48 percent of criminal acts in Paris are committed by foreigners, while this figure is 55 percent in Marseille.