Ghanaian ‘who raped woman and forced boyfriend to watch’ was due to be deported

An asylum seeker who allegedly raped a woman and forced her boyfriend to watch had just been told he was due to be deported.

Days later he allegedly forced his way into the couple’s tent at a nature reserve in Germany and used a machete-like tree saw to hand over their valuables.

He then ordered the woman, 23, to come outside where he raped her, according to police. The suspect was arrested last Saturday in Siegburg after a hiker recognised the asylum seeker from a police picture.

The 31-year-old Ghanaian asylum seeker, who was not named due to strict German privacy laws, received notice from the German authorities ten days before the rape of the young woman that he would face deportation as his asylum application had been rejected. At the beginning of February, he arrived in Germany from Italy. In accordance with the Dublin procedure, the man had to be deported back to Italy, it being his first entry point into the Schengen zone. He arrived in Italy on 24th January, with the Italian authorities already rejecting his asylum application on 7th February, after which he escaped in illegality and made the journey to Germany. German local media wondered why the man had not immediately been deported after getting his notice to leave or when he was first caught in Germany in the city of Kassel for illegally entering the country. The man had until then been living in a central housing institution for asylum seekers in the town of Sankt Augustin to the East of Bonn. He is now still sitting in investigative custody in the nearby city of Cologne. Bonn police spokesman Robert Scholten said: ‘As well as from the rape, we found a lot of DNA samples at the crime scene, which are clearly from the arrested man.’