Two Iraqi migrant brothers are on trial in a Berlin court after being accused of dragging young women into an SUV and then raping them for hours.
The brothers, 33-year-old Wisam and 25-year-old Karrar, were born in Baghdad and have been in custody since March of this year. They are accused of several rapes dating back to March 2018, some of which involved both of the brothers.
The first two cases involve the elder brother, Wisam, and relate to incidents that are said to have occurred in his apartment. He is accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in March 2018 and then raping a woman in May of the following year, tabloid BZ reports.
The incidents allegedly involving both of the brothers took place this year. The first occurred in January and saw the men, along with a third suspect, drag an 18-year-old woman into their vehicle at around 3:30 am after she had left the techno club Mensch Meier in the Friedrichshain district.
The teen was raped for several hours both in the SUV and in the apartment of one of the suspects. She was thrown into the street at around 7:20 in the morning.
Another women, a 21-year-old, was also dragged into the SUV by the Iraqi migrants and repeatedly raped after attending another techno club in the Friedrichshain district.
Christina Clemm, the lawyer for one of the victims, told the newspaper: “She was in fear of death for almost four hours.” A verdict in the case is expected in January of next year.
The case bears similarity to one that took place in Vienna, Austria, and also involved Iraqi migrants who were related to each other. Nine Iraqi men were arrested in August 2016 for the rape of a German woman on New Year’s Day that year.
Earlier this year, Berlin’s government released statistics on rapes in the German capital, which revealed that in half of the cases, migrants were the suspected perpetrators. Of the 210 rapes from March to July of this year, 50 of the victims were under 16.
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