Police in the French commune of Leers arrested a man described as a radical Islamic extremist on Sunday after he allegedly kidnapped a 15-year-old girl and raped her over a period of several days.
Police were alerted to the situation by a neighbour of the man who spoke to the 15-year-old, who is said to be an Iraqi national, and helped her escape the man’s apartment, where she had been for nearly a week after being abducted off the streets of Douai, a commune south of Leers.
“I approached. The teenager was urging me to come, she told me that she had been raped, that she was going to die, that the man had locked her up, but had just gone shopping,” the neighbour told French newspaper La Voix du Nord.
The neighbour claimed that the teen has signs of strangulation marks on her neck as well as bruises across her body.
“She was terrified, she didn’t let go of me… she was shaking everywhere. She remained clinging to me until help arrived. She told me she came from Douai, was abducted by this man and has been locked in this apartment since last Monday. She told me that she had called for help several times without anyone answering her,” the neighbour said.
The man is said to be known as a radicalised Muslim who has previously terrorised the local neighbourhood, and is also believed to suffer from mental health issues and has previously been arrested by the elite National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) after a neighbour believed he had obtained gas canisters to blow up a building.
The suspect was held after his Sunday arrest for interviews by French police. The Prosecutor’s office of Douai, meanwhile, has claimed it did not receive any missing person reports relating to the case.
The case bears some similarity to another case in Italy in 2019 that saw a 32-year-old Belgian woman kidnapped by six Tunisian migrants and was forced into sexual slavery over a period of two months.
The woman had approached one of the migrants who had offered to sell her drugs and found herself lured to the home of one of the migrants where she was tied to a bed and repeatedly raped by the men.
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