A 20-year-old Afghan migrant was arrested this week after a brutal sex attack in a Munich metro station in which an intoxicated 18-year-old Polish student was raped for several hours. Part of the incident was captured on the Munich metro CCTV cameras, according to reports. Despite this, it remains unclear whether or not anyone witnessed the assault and, if they did, why no one came to the aid of the Polish teen.
The incident began on Saturday, August 19th, at around 1 a.m. at the Max-Weber-Platz station on the subway platform after the teen, who was in Munich studying German, had laid down on the platform following an evening of drinking with his friends, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.
Following the rape attack, the teen managed to get back to his home on his own and reported the incident to the police along with the that fact his phone had been stolen as well.
The theft of the phone greatly aided police in their search for the suspect as they used the device to track the location of the Afghan migrant, which subsequently led to his arrest.
Police later noted that the rape likely took place between 2:35 am and 3:05 am and that there was no subway service during this period, which may explain the lack of witnesses to the attack. Police also claimed that the security guard on duty did not witness the rape either.
The Munich Transport Company (MVG), which employs the security guards on the Munich metro system, claimed that the gates of the station had been locked at 3:10 am and that the two guards on duty had checked the station for people and had not seen anyone.
“At this time, when the station was inspected before the gates were closed, no more people were found in the station by the two employees deployed for this purpose,” the company said in a statement.
The case is just the latest of several sex attacks committed by Afghan migrants in Germany in recent years although most of the victims in such attacks are usually women and young girls.
In 2017, a pair of Afghan asylum seekers were arrested in the town of Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn south of Munich after being accused of brutally raping a 16-year-old girl after meeting the teen in front of a local asylum shelter.
That same year, a Bavarian police report claimed that the number of rape attacks attributable to migrants had increased by 91% from January to July of 2016, with police totalling 126 cases involving migrants overall out of a total of 685 cases, or around one out of every five rapes.
In other European countries, Afghan migrants have been involved in high-profile sexual abuse cases, including in Germany’s neighbour Austria, where three Afghans not only raped a 13-year-old girl but allowed her to overdose on illegal drugs, killing the young teen.
The case of Leonie shocked Austrians when her body was found wrapped in a carpet next to a tree in July 2021.
The main suspect in the case, who had initially fled to the UK before he was arrested and sent back to Austria, was sentenced to life in prison for murder, while the other two Afghans were given 19 and 20 years for murder by omission and all were found guilty of rape.
