Despite his age, a 22-year-old Syrian man charged with orchestrating last year’s brutal gang rape of an 18-year-old German girl will appear in a juvenile court, local media reported on Tuesday.
Some media outlets claim that he was under 21 at the time he committed the crime, which is why he is due to face trial at a court which handles juveniles and young adult offenders between the ages of 14 and 20.
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Investigators believe that the man, who was only identified as Majd H., raped the girl outside a nightclub in the southwestern German city of Freiburg on 14 October 2018 before calling “at least nine” of his friends, who took turns sexually assaulting the 18-year-old for four hours.
The suspects, aged between 19 and 30, are currently being held in investigative custody and have yet to be charged.
Martina Wilke, a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor's office, said that “the main suspect was charged with a total of nine criminal acts”.
Before being involved in the gang-rape, Majd H. reportedly had an arrest warrant issued against him over a drugs offence and was due to be detained a few days later.
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The man, who came to Germany in 2014, is thought to have links to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). The trial date for Majd H. is due to be announced in the immediate future.
Apart from mass protest rallies in Freiburg over the gang bang case, the German city of Chemnitz was rocked in September by anti-immigrant protests, led by right-wing activists, after a local carpenter was allegedly stabbed to death by a migrant from Syria and another from Iraq following an altercation.
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