Man Arrested For Kidnap, Rape And Torture Of Woman

A 37-year-old Spanish man has been arrested for imprisoning, beating and raping his girlfriend over a period of four months.

The man is accused of detaining the 35-year-old Algerian woman against her will in a flat in Fuenlabrada, a dormitory town to the south of the Spanish capital, Madrid.

A neighbour said: “We knew something bad was happening in that flat, and we heard some sobbing, but the truth is, the man was always so polite when he left the house.”

The couple had been going out together since May when the man’s attitude suddenly changed and he began to violently intimidate her.

After four months of what police have described as “rape, physical aggression, and psychological abuse” she managed to get hold of her captor’s phone and alert her sister. The sister found her in the street near the flat crouching between two cars, and immediately took her to the police station.

When police arrived at the flat they found two mobile phones and a tablet computer containing extensive images of the abuse. It appears that the man, who has not been named, even filmed the couple’s apparently happy walks at the beginning of the relationship.

However, things soon turned dark. The recordings reportedly show the woman being repeatedly forced to kneel and swear submission to her captor, as well as him striking her and breaking her nose, along with numerous acts of humiliation and sexual assault.

Police commented that the man would often play loud music to cover up the sounds of the violence.

The Mayor of Fuenlabrada, Javier Ayala, of the centre-left PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party), reiterated his administration’s commitment to combating gender violence.

He said: “We all feel pain and revulsion at these types of intolerable and inhuman sexist aggression, against which we are going to fight so that they never happen again.”

The man, who has a previous conviction for causing injury, was placed in preventive detention pending trial.