The police in the Spanish seaside town of Torrevieja have arrested a 27-year-old man of Moroccan descent and are seeking two other individuals following the rape and robbery of a 32-year-old Belgian woman.
Police say that the Belgian tourist was out walking her dog at around 6 am when she was approached by a man who tried speaking to her in several different languages. When she attempted the walk away, the man grabbed her by the arm and raped her, Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad reports.
While the sex attack was taking place, two more men arrived on the scene and instead of helping the woman, they used the opportunity to rob her, stealing several items including her mobile phone and then left.
“The victim was in a state of complete helplessness,” local police told the press.
The woman, according to police, required medical treatment after the sex attack but was also quick to help police identify her attacker by describing him in great detail. She was not able to identify the thieves, however, as she could not see them during her ordeal.
She described a hat which the rapist was wearing and police were able to identify the 27-year-old Moroccan man and arrest him, finding the same hat along with the clothes the woman described him as wearing in his home.
The thieves, who were witnesses to her rape, have not been apprehended.
Brutal, random rapes, often committed by asylum seekers, have become more and more common in countries affected by mass migration, in particular in Germany where migrant sex attacks havegreatly increased in regions such as Bavaria.
In September, a 34-year-old failed Nigerian failed asylum seeker was arrested for the alleged rape of a woman who was out jogging in a park in the town of Rosenheim.
While Germany and other countries have seen a steady decline in migrant numbers since 2015, Spain has seen the opposite with the number of migrants increasing in the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla as well as the Spanish mainland.
Earlier this year, the European Union border agency Frontex said the number of migrants heading to Spain not only doubled in 2017 but was likely to increase further this year.