Rieti, sexual assault in drug-ridden woods: 22-year-old North African arrested.

On the afternoon of last 30th September the State Police, specifically the personnel of the Flying Squad of the Rieti Police Headquarters together with personnel of the Naples Police Headquarters - State Police Station "Vasto Arenaccia", proceeded to A twenty-two-year-old Moroccan man has been arrested on suspicion of aggravated sexual assault.

The young man, landed in Lampedusa in 2022, with no criminal record and seeking international protection, was wanted by the Rieti Flying Squad as seriously suspected of the crime of sexual violence, aggravated by the use of weapons or objects capable of causing offence, against a thirty-year-old woman from Rieti who, last April, in the middle of the night, had gone to a wood on the outskirts of the capital to buy some narcotics.

According to what was reconstructed by the State Police investigators, who acquired the woman's complaint and immediately activated the procedures of the “code red”, the young woman, in the month of April, she had gone in the middle of the night to the woods on the outskirts of Rieti to purchase doses of narcotic substances from one Moroccan drug dealer, his regular supplier who, obviously drunk, had it attacked and raped her after threatening her and beating her with kicks, punches and blows inflicted with the handle of a machete.

After the violence, The foreigner had also accused the woman of having been the informer of the arrest of one of her fellow countrymen for drug dealing., also operating in the Rieti woods.

The woman, who in the circumstances had suffered injuries for which it had been necessary to seek medical care at the Rieti Emergency Room, had recognised her rapist, from whom she had purchased drugs several times in the past, thanks to a photo recognition carried out in the offices of the Flying Squad.

The foreigner was then reported to the Public Prosecutor's Office of Rieti for the aggravated sexual assault, aggravated assault, possession of weapons or objects capable of causing offence, obstruction of justice and supply of narcotics.

To betray the man, tracked down by the Flying Squad of the Naples Police Station in a hotels in the area, the system alert “Web Hosts” arrived at the Operations Room of the Campania police office following the tracking report entered by the Rieti investigators.

The young man arrested was taken to the Secondigliano Prison (NA), at the disposal of the proceeding Judicial Authority.

In the morning of October 6, 2025 the GIP of the Ordinary Court of Naples validated the arrest, confirming the measure of the precautionary custody in prison.