A judge in Mallorca has ordered five men from Germany into custody. The tourists are accused of gang rape. A sixth vacationer was released.
Five tourists from Germany have to be remanded in custody in Mallorca on suspicion of gang rape. A court spokeswoman said the court declined to release him on bail. A sixth vacationer from Germany was released.
Pre-trial detention in Spain can last weeks or months. If convicted of rape, penalties of up to 12 years can be imposed.
Met at Ballermann
The police had described the course of events they had determined in a press release on Saturday morning. According to this, a young woman at Ballermann initially agreed on Thursday night to go to his hotel room with one of the vacationers. However, she was turned away at reception because she was not a guest there. The two then went to a nearby hotel, where five of the man’s friends stayed.
When they later came to her room, four of them forced her to perform sexual acts. One of the suspects filmed the crime with his cell phone. The woman then fled to the bathroom, the police reported.
police informed
One of the young Germans admitted to the woman that they had gone too far, calmed her down a bit and persuaded her to accompany her to the hotel where friends of hers were staying.
From there, the woman alerted the police, who arrested five men in their hotel early Thursday morning and a sixth on Friday. The young German was taken to a hospital for an examination.
In the Spanish media, the six men were sometimes referred to as “Manada alemana”, a “German pack”. This drew a parallel to a 2016 gang rape in Pamplona. At that time, five young men had raped a young woman in a doorway and filmed it. An initially very lenient sentence against these men, known as “Manada”, triggered demonstrations across the country. The sex criminal law was changed as a result.