Nine people including 5 suspected rapists have been arrested by police in Chad after photographs of a girl allegedly brutally gang-raped spread on social media.
“Five rapists and their four accomplices have been detained,” Louapambe Mahouli Bruno, the public prosecutor in Chad’s capital N’Djamena told the press.
He also said a young man was killed when riot police violently shut down a protest by hundreds of young Chadians in N’Djamena on Monday.
According to the protesters, a girl named Zouhoura was kidnapped last weekend and gang-raped by five young men from families of senior officers.
The men then allegedly posted a video online showing the victim in tears. The video has since been removed.
On Monday morning, pupils from Zouhoura’s high school and other protesters gathered outside the girl’s home and marched to the court to demand compensation for her.
Singing the national anthem, they waved banners that read “Justice for Zouhoura” and “We are all Zouhoura, our dignity is being denied”.
In a statement, Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno lashed the rape as a “barbaric, vile and unmentionable act” and swore “justice will be done.”
