A Syrian migrant is facing charges of assaulting a senior citizen and raping a young woman in a two-day crime spree that was made possible by the fact that prosecutors refused to remand him to custody after the first attack.
According to the Berliner Zeitung, the Syrian migrant, identified as 25-year-old Ayman Al-K., first broke into the apartment of a 78-year-old woman with the intention of sexually assaulting her in November of last year. Ayman had pushed his way into the victim’s unit as she tried to close the door.
After he entered, he put the senior citizen into a headlock, covering her nose and mouth as she desperately tried to scream for help. Fortunately, the woman was able to fight him off until police arrived – her cries having alerted her concerned neighbors.
Despite being arrested near the scene of the crime, the Berlin public prosecutor decided that Ayman couldn’t be held in custody because there was no guarantee he had been the one to commit the assault. As a result, he was almost immediately released.
After being turned loose, the migrant was sent back to his asylum accommodation in Ostpreussendamm, in the south-west of Berlin. While there, he is alleged to have cornered and raped a 23-year-old woman despite the victim’s best efforts to defend herself. The woman reportedly bit Ayman in an effort to get him away from her, leaving deep gashes on his neck.
Ayman is now facing 10 charges including of bodily harm and attempted sexual assault and rape, with a verdict set to be heard in his case on August 12, 2024.
As previously reported by The Publica, Berlin recorded a record 111 gang rapes in 2023, with 54% of the suspects in these crimes being foreign nationals. This is despite the fact that non-citizens only make up 24.4% of Berlin’s population, making them overrepresented by a factor of two.
According to data released in April by the German Federal Interior Ministry, the number of foreign suspects in all crimes soared to a whopping 923,000 in 2023, an 18% increase on the previous year. 41% of suspects in all crimes are foreigners, even though across the country, they are a mere 15% of the population in total.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the left-wing SPD has claimed that the real threat to Germans is “right-wing extremism,” even though violent crime and rape from foreign criminals has risen dramatically during her time in office.