Two Pakistani migrants were arrested in the Italian city of Brindisi this week after being accused of raping a boy who was waiting for a train at the city’s railway station.
The two men, identified as 29-year-old Rab Nawaz and 28-year-old Ali Imram, have been accused of making sexual advances toward a young man at the train station and forcing him into an alley where they are said to have raped him, Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reports.
The victim was able to call police following the attack but the Pakistani men fled in a nearby car. Police were eventually able to catch up with the pair of migrants, one of whom is living in the country on an expired residence permit, and arrest them. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital due to injuries suffered during the sex attack.
According to investigators, the victim, who has not been identified or given an exact age, said that the men had approached him and he had tried to leave the station but was followed, pushed into an alley and attacked. He also said that he attempted in vain to fight off the pair.
The attack is just the latest case of migrant violence in Italy, which was recently rocked by the brutal murder of 18-year-old Italian girl Pamela Mastropietro earlier this month.
Mastropietro, who was in rehab for drug addiction, was lured away from the centre she was staying by a Nigerian drug dealer named Innocent Oseghale who has been accused of murdering her, dismembering her body and leaving her remains in suitcases by the side of a road.
Since the initial arrest police have also arrested several other Nigerian migrants in connection with the murder. Reports suggest parts of the victim’s body had been soaked in bleach to eliminate evidence of rape.
Leading Italian criminologist Alessandro Meluzzi has claimed that the Nigerian mafia is “colonizing Italy” and noted: “What we have seen in the case of Pamela are the same methods the Nigerian mafia systematically employs in Nigeria and elsewhere. It is a routine to cut victims into pieces and, in some cases, to eat parts of their bodies.”
Polls for the upcoming Italian national election have shown a consistent support for the conservative-populist coalition of Lega leader Matteo Salvini and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who have both announced plans to deport hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants.