The alleged gang rapists of a British teenager in Magaluf have been warned they face prison sentences totalling more than 150 years if convicted. Spanish public prosecutors announced in an indictment made public yesterday they were seeking individual jail sentences of between 18 and 20 years for each of the eight men charged over the horror crime – totalling 151 years.
All eight, seven French nationals and one from Switzerland, have been held on remand in prison since their arrests last year and are expected to remain behind bars until their trial. Two of the suspects, charged earlier this year following a lengthy probe by an investigating magistrate, were held abroad on a European Arrest Warrant and extradited. Six were detained in Majorca.
Some of the harrowing details about the alleged actions of the men accused over the sickening crimes against the 18-year-old British tourist in Magaluf in August last year had already emerged around the time they were charged. Reports at the time said three of the suspects met the teenager hours earlier while partying in Magaluf and one had allegedly gone out into a hotel corridor after “sexually attacking” her to encourage strangers returning from their own night out to have “free sex” with her.
Respected Majorcan newspaper Diario de Mallorca, outlining details of the female investigating judge’s probe, reported this summer she had concluded at least five of the men took turns to rape their alleged victim while the other three sexually assaulted her.
The 14-page indictment laying out the public prosecution case against the suspects confirms many aspects of those reports and others pointing to their alleged humiliating treatment of the Brit tourist, saying six of the suspects went to a room where one of them was staying and met another two men including a roommate who were already inside with the teenager.
It says: “There, the accused men, during approximately half an hour, aware of the semi-conscious state the young woman was in and at one point seeing she had fallen in a state of unconsciousness, and taking advantage of the closed room she had been taken into, stripped her naked leaving her with only her bra on. They then carried out different sexual acts on her, acting by common consent and without her consent.”
Saying she was raped in all manner of ways, and spat on, as well as being “hit and smacked on her bottom” the indictment goes on to detail how the British woman was surrounded by the “libidinous” gang as they shouted insults at her while they perpetrated their sex crimes.
Many of the insults prosecutors say they yelled at her are unsuitable for a family newspaper and we have decided against publishing most of them, although one of the tamer one highlighted in the indictment is: “He is going to get his six-metre pistol out” and another: “Today we’re going to have a good time.”
The prosecution indictment goes on to say: “The accused men, each one with a mobile phone, throughout the actions previously described, recorded several videos focusing on the young woman’s private parts in which they appeared forcing her to to carry out sexual acts.”
It goes on to accuse two of the men of sending the recordings from their phones and sharing them on Snapchat in boasts about their actions while their alleged victim was still “semi-unconscious or unconscious.” One of the suspects stands accused of filming 14 videos lasting 170 seconds, and another of filming five videos lasting 142 seconds.
The eight men were aged between 18 and 26 when they were arrested. The charges laid as part of the criminal investigation include five counts of rape involving two or more men simultaneously and “particularly degrading and humiliating intimidation and violence”, one count of sexual assault without penetration, and mistreatment and privacy crimes relating to the publication of the mobile phone videos.
The men have been identified in the public prosecution indictment as primary authors of rape or accomplices who knowingly, voluntarily and with common intent united with the principal offender in the commission of the sex crime. The prison sentences public prosecutors are demanding on conviction range from four to 15 years for the most serious of the crimes.
The prosecutors also want them to compensate their alleged victim with €100,000 (£83,000) if convicted as charged. No date for the trial, expected to take place next year, has yet been set. After the incident involving the British teenager, the resort said it was cooperating fully with the authorities and offered its support to the unnamed holidaymaker.
A spokesman said in a statement at the time said the resort “deeply regrets what has happened and would like to manifest its firm and forceful repudiation of the alleged sexual attack that occurred. The hotel also wants to demonstrate its solidarity with the alleged victim of this aggression.
“We are co-operating fully with the Civil Guard and its investigators in everything they consider to be necessary. This hotel ratifies through this statement its commitment to the condemnation of all types of sexual attacks that affect peoples’ dignity and physical integrity. Behaviour that undermines those rights has no place in this establishment.”
The Civil Guard in Majorca said in a statement after the last of the eight arrests: “The Civil Guard has closed the investigation sparked by the alleged gang rape that took place in a hotel in Magaluf. Officers saw early on the complexity of the investigation, as the alleged aggressors didn’t form part of the same group of friends but encouraged by other participants, had allegedly joined the group action in sporadic acts, meaning no type of relationship existed between them.”
Confirming the first six suspects had been held the day of the alleged sex attack and remanded in prison, a force spokesman added: “The probe continued to identify the two young men whose arrests were pending. One they had been identified, officers discovered they had taken a flight to Baden-Baden in Germany so they could head to their homes in the Strasbourg area.
“The Civil Guard sought the assistance of the French authorities through the normal channels and issued European Arrest Warrants to avoid them evading justice. On Sunday August 20 2023 the French police confirmed they arrested one of them in the French locality of Scherwiller before subsequently confirming a second arrest at Basilea Mulhouse Freiburg Airport in France, when that suspect was trying to take a flight to Turkey to avoid detention.”
It was also claimed the first of the Magaluf gang-rape suspects was held after Spanish police got him to answer the ‘stolen’ mobile phone of the British teenager targeted. The French youngster picked up the phone and then went with two holiday pals to the lobby of the hotel where the sex attack allegedly took place unaware they would be met by the teenager and detectives assisting her, respected Majorcan newspaper Ultima Hora reported in the days after the incident.
All three were arrested on the spot before the other three suspects were located over the following hours after the 18-year-old gave police their descriptions A security guard at the hotel where the incident occurred came to the rescue of the British teenager after finding her sobbing on the floor in the lobby.
He had just come in for his morning shift and described the police response at the time as very quick and efficient. Bruises were found on the tourist’s arm during a medical examination which were believed to have been caused by her alleged rapists holding her down.
She also suffered a cut to her chest. A lawyer acting for the teenager is also due to ‘privately prosecute’ the eight suspects in a case which will run parallel to the state prosecution in the same courtroom in the Majorcan capital Palma. His indictment has yet to be submitted to the courts.
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