A 21-year-old Egyptian man has been arrested following accusations that he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in an asylum home despite the fact that he was rejected for asylum since 2011 and authorities have been trying to deport him for five years.
The sex attack occurred in an asylum shelter in Hamburg-Winterhude on the 22nd of December but details are only now being released. Authorities say that the 14-year-old girl was in the custody of the state and was a guest at the shelter when the 21-year-old Egyptian is said to have forced her to perform sex acts on him, Die Welt reports.
The attacker named Loai E, according to police, is said to have confronted the young girl in the toilet where “the suspect demanded the performance of sexual acts, which was rejected by the 14-year-old,” police officer Ulf Wundrack said. He added, “then the 21-year-old dragged her into a room and forced her to perform sexual acts against her will.”
Loai E came to Germany as an underage asylum seeker in 2011 according to Die Welt and was processed and rejected in the same year. He was scheduled to be deported, but because he did not have the proper identification papers the Egyptian government refused to take him back. The government has attempted in vain to deport the man every year – most recently in the summer of 2016.
While the young girl was a resident of the shelter, her attacker was not and was housed in separate accommodation. Police are now questioning why he was able to access the girl’s residence in the first place. Loai E. was arrested on the 30th of December and now awaits a court date and likely prosecution for sexual assault.
The case bears resemblance to other recent rapes and sexual attacks committed by rejected asylum seekers. Last month a 34-year-old rejected asylum seeker raped a woman in the toilet of a popular bar in Hamburg’s red light district. The migrant had previously been arrested on theft charges and authorities are still examining why he was allowed to stay in the country, despite having a prior criminal history.
The lack of deportations, specifically of migrants originating in North Africa, has grown into a national debate after it was revealed that the attacker in the Berlin Christmas market terror attack, Amis Amri, had been a rejected Tunisian asylum seeker.
North African countries have been less than cooperative with Germany regarding the taking back of their nationals leading to the deportation rate for the year being in the hundreds although there are hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers in the country.