The crime was well-planned: The two 17-year-old refugees from Afghanistan and their 16-year-old accomplice ambushed the 21-year-old exchange student on her way home from the toilet on the Praterstern in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna at 1 a.m. on Friday, April 22, 2016. As soon as the girl was in the toilet, a perpetrator opened the lock with a coin. The young woman resisted – the three Afghans knocked her down, the victim’s head was hit against the toilet bowl, her mouth and nose were held shut. The younger perpetrator brutally held the student, his two compatriots raped the student several times.
The three men were soon traced, but at the trial at the end of January 2017, they were meek and camera-shy. The presiding judge clearly stated: “A remorseful confession is not what the defendants made, as they repeatedly relativised their actions when asked about them. And: The multiple commission of the crime, the extremely brutal procedure, the fact that three perpetrators were facing a victim, who was even more in a particularly defenceless state in the toilet, were aggravating factors. The judge added: “I can’t imagine whether they will get a right of residence after their imprisonment”.
The judge imposed prison sentences: two times six years for the two 17-year-old Afghans, once five years for the offender who was one year younger. The three rapists should therefore be in prison until next year.
But the three Afghans are no longer in custody, they are free, they are probably still living among us – the three rapists are somewhere in Vienna or in a big German city. “Yes, the three boys have all been released from custody early,” confirmed lawyer Dr Martin Mahrer in an interview with eXXpress.
This is “not at all unusual, but actually normal in the penal system”, the lawyer explains: after serving 2/3 of the prison sentence, release is foreseen – so the Afghan sex criminals were released from their cells after only three and four years. With the conviction in January 2017 and the months of pre-trial detention taken into account, even the two main perpetrators may have been released at the beginning of this year.
The victim will no longer have to fear meeting these three Afghans again: The student is back in Turkey, lawyer Sonja Aziz tells eXXpress: “The requirement that the three perpetrators pay the young woman 24,310 euros in compensation for pain and suffering was not met.” Not a single cent had been paid, the sum is considered irrecoverable, the three perpetrators will probably get away without paying.
The eXXpress was unable to research where the three Afghans now live: The names are kept secret – so it is uncertain whether the trio might have been flown to Afghanistan before the Taliban took over the government.
However, the chances of deportation would have been extremely poor: In four years (May 217 to May 2021), only 1316 forced departures of Afghans took place – i.e. an average of 329 persons per year. 44,000 Afghans are currently in Austria.
https://exxpress.at/vergewaltigung-am-praterstern-alle-drei-afghanen-wieder-in-freiheit/