Belgian police investigating a tip-off about the possible radicalization of a 14-year-old male student have discovered a video implicating him and six others in the gang rape of an unconscious girl. Five of the suspects are Iraqi immigrants.
The video was shot on a phone camera and reportedly shows the assailants laughing, singing and dancing around their victim, who has passed out after drinking too much alcohol. The men pulled the girl’s pants down then groped and raped her, police told the Belgian media.
Police officials in Ostend, Belgium’s largest coastal city, discovered the evidence of the sex crime as they were investigating a 14-year-old student of the Ostend Technical Institute, who had been seen showing his friends a photo of himself wearing military garb and holding a sub-machine gun. The gang rape video was found on the boy’s phone.
Of the seven people arrested in connection with the gang rape, two are Belgium nationals and five are Iraqi immigrants. The oldest suspect is 25 years old.
The 17-year-old victim was identified and has been found. She said she had attended a party with her boyfriend and became unconscious after drinking too much alcohol. After waking up, she called a taxi and went home. She said she didn’t remember what had happen to her.
Several of the suspects showed little remorse for the incident, which happened in November, and didn’t even believe it was a crime at all, the police said.
“She has nothing to complain about. Women must obey men,” one of them reportedly told the police.
The attitude sparked outrage among Belgians.
“It is clear that some newcomers have problematic beliefs about relations between men and women,” commented Ostend Mayor Johan Vande Lanotte. “When they have served their sentences, they must leave the country.”
Theo Francken, Belgium's minister for asylum and immigration, made a similar statement: “Rapists won't be given asylum. They will be sent back to Iraq if they are found guilty.”