Four suspected North African migrants who beat, robbed and sexually assaulted a Polish couple in Italy gang raped a transsexual from Peru on the same night, according to reports.
The third victim was attacked on a beach in Rimini either before the couple or shortly afterwards on a nearby road, Polish outlet Gazeta Wyborcza reports.
The newspaper indicates that the perpetrators — who are still at large — were “probably four illegal immigrants from North Africa under the age of 30”, and that the Italian authorities have their fingerprints and CCTV footage from the beach.
They were also able to relate a brief account of the attacks by the 26-year-old Polish male:
“Four men came up to us speaking in broken English,” he said.
“When I realized what was going on, it was too late. They hit me with a bottle in my head and then beat me until I fainted. I wanted to do something for [my girlfriend].”
He is likely to require surgery, having suffered serious facial injuries during the attack.
“I want to have this nightmare behind me, though it will be difficult to forget what happened to us,” he finished.
Poland’s Justice Minister and Prosecutor General, Zbigniew Ziobro, has sent Polish investigators to Italy to assist with the case, which he described as a “horrible crime”.
Under Polish law, foreigners who attack Polish citizens abroad can be punished in Poland, with the sentence the case of rape being a minimum of five years.
Clearly moved by the horrific nature of the crime, which ended with the attackers attempting to drown the woman they had repeatedly raped, Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki tweeted that “for these bastards should be the death penalty, although for this particular case I would also restore torture”.
“Rimini is shocked by this sudden, extraordinary, beastly and cruel violence,” commented town mayor Andrea Gnassi, who called the attack a manifestation “of evil and the absence of any pity or humanity”.
He said the town would bring a civil suit against the perpetrators and called for the strongest possible punishment — but Adam Stępień, a photojournalist for Gazeta Wyborcza, said he did not feel safe while in Rimini himself.
“After a few days there, we noticed that there were no police stations, even though there were crowds of tourists,” he observed, adding that there appeared to be no police presence on the practically unlit beaches at night.
Illegal migrants are said to mingle freely on the beaches posing as tourists and trafficking drugs, according to sources for the ANSA news agency.