Female Afghan Interpreter Working with a TV Crew ‘Is Raped by Three Armed Migrants’
Peter Allen and Jennifer Newton, Daily Mail, October 18, 2016
Three armed migrants were being hunted in Calais today after a young woman was raped at knife point in the Jungle refugee camp.
The horrifying attack took place at around 2.30am and involved a TV crew who were shooting a documentary about child sex abuse in the notorious shanty town.
The rape victim, a 38-year-old woman originally from Afghanistan and can speak Pashtun, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was acting as an interpreter to a 42-year-old male reporter.
She was bundled to the ground and attacked as the two other assailants, who also spoke Pashtun, restrained her colleague.
It comes as French authorities are preparing to bulldoze the makeshift camp with refugees spending their final day there today and hours after a Sky News team were also attacked.
Judicial sources in nearby Boulogne-sur-Mer confirmed that three UK-bound Afghans were responsible for the vicious assault, and were still at large.
The rape victim was from Paris and was working with the reporter on a journalistic project, said one of the sources.
The men initially tried to steal the journalists’ equipment and then one of them turned on the young woman.
After the rape, the pair managed to escape, and went straight to Calais police station, where they gave witness statements. The woman was then treated in hospital.
Pascal Marconville, the prosecutor in nearby Boulogne-sur-Mer told the Voix du Nord newspaper: ‘The victim was examined by a forensics doctor, who confirmed the rape.
‘Samples have been taken to try to determine the genetic profile of the rapist.’
Mr Marconville confirmed that the three attackers were ‘still at large’, and that everything was being done to try and find them.
There are some 10,000 people currently living in the Jungle, and the vast majority are young men from war torn countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea.
The camp is due to be razed to the ground as early as next week, with residents now starting to leave.
The rape in the Jungle comes a day after a British TV crew was attacked by a mob wielding knives and sharpened sticks.
Members of the Sky News team were injured and had a camera stolen during the incident at a petrol station close to the Jungle on Sunday night.
Sky reporter Mark Stone said: ‘We had been welcomed earlier by the migrants, we felt no threat.
‘We spotted them and filmed briefly, but then two dozen turned up. Rocks were thrown followed by a sustained attack with knives and sticks until we reached our car–cut, bruised and without one of our cameras.
‘What we experienced last night was frightening. These men are evidently violent and they’re dangerous. They wrestled us to the ground and they hit us.’
He added: ‘It is not unusual. It is happening here on a nightly basis.’
News of the attacks come as a coach-load of migrant and refugee families left the Calais camp today before bulldozers move in to demolish makeshift homes in the slum.
Young children were among those who boarded the coach on the camp’s fringe before it took them to communities in the south of France to start a new life.
Among the first to claim a seat was Naqeebullah Noorzada, 44, from Afghanistan, who was with his three children aged eight, six and 10, and his sister-in-law.
He said he reached the Jungle after paying a people-smuggler $30,000 (£24,000) to get his family out of his war-torn country via Iran and Turkey before reaching Europe by boat.
Queueing for the coach in the drizzle, Mr Noorzada said: ‘There are a lot of problems here, particularly if you have children, so we are moving elsewhere in France, in the south near the Spanish border.
‘We are at war in my country. We had to escape the Taliban. I want my children to have an education.
‘We are happy to be moving out of here. We will be at peace. My first choice was London because I love the English and I speak good English.
‘But wherever there is peace is my second choice.’
Meanwhile, pictures showed other migrants being handed out suitcases in order to pack up their belongings while several tents had been daubed in graffiti, one with the slogan ‘London Calling’.
The Jungle closure plan will see 40 to 50 people being held at reception centres in regions across France for up to four months while authorities investigate their cases.
Those who do not seek asylum will be deported.
The arrival of many lone migrant children has also stretched services in Britain, with Kent County Council reporting demand for foster carers is reaching crisis point partly due to the new arrivals.