In an explosive trial in Vienna, 19 migrants — along with Austrians with a migration background — are accursed of blackmailing and gang raping a 12-year-old girl over the course of months, with the first one already confessing to his crimes.
Syrian 17-year-old Ahmad claims he did not know how young the victim was but said she wanted to have sexual relations with him. He is considered the key suspect in the case and organized most of the blackmail against the girl.
The 19 suspects are accused of gang raping Mia for months and using videos of the gang rapes taken between February and June 2023 as blackmail material to coerce her into having further sex, sometimes multiple times a week.
Many of the rapes took place in a parking garage, in a stairwell, and inside the home of one of the 15-year-old suspects near Helmut Zilk Park in the 10th district. In addition, the suspects even rented out a hotel room to gang rape her there, according to German newspaper Bild.
Mia claims that Ahmad physically forced her into giving him oral sex the first time, and with subsequent recordings, he and his horde of migrant friends repeatedly raped her over the course of months.
In one video, she is seen being abused by eight of the migrants while screaming, “Stop!”
Eventually, Mia confided in her mother, who responded by compiling videos and photos of the perpetrators from TikTok and Instagram profiles and providing it to the police, resulting in the mass arrest of the suspects.
Notably, Ahmad is no longer being charged with sex with a minor because he claims he thought she was older. She says she told Ahmad she was 13.
“I thought she was my age, 14 or something,” he said.
The case my set precedent in other cases where suspects simply say they did not know how old a minor was when they chose to have sex. The prosecutor appeared to agree with Ahmad, saying she looks older than 12.
LKA Major Florian Finda said that “on Oct. 23, the mother came to the station with her daughter and her partner.”
While the perpetrators used blackmail to coerce her into sex, Finda said “she had been abused once using violence. The perpetrator was a 16-year-old Syrian. After that, the others constantly put pressure on her to sleep with them… She showed us chat messages saying that there was a video of her having sex with them and that if she didn’t want it to be published, she should sleep with them.”
The victim is Austrian while the suspects are Syrians, Turks, an Italian, a Bulgarian, a Serb and Austrians with a migration background, according to Austrian media reports. Four of the 17 accused are still minors.
Major Finda: “They all know each other from the park, from sitting together on the benches. Once at the end of April a hotel room was booked, and we were able to prove this booking belonged to the accused.”
Finda also stated that all of the perpetrators are known to the police for crimes, but mainly financial and property crimes.
Other suspects have already confessed to police but have yet to take the stand. The oldest, Umut, is of legal age to be tried, but many of them will likely receive lenient sentences due to their age at the time of the crime.
The trial is ongoing and involves numerous perpetrators. MIa’s lawyer is seeking the maximum of five years for Ahmad.
