Rasuili Zubaidullah, an Afghan migrant accused of raping and killing a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Leonie Walner in Vienna, will be extradited back to Austria.
The crime came to light after Walner’s corpse was found wrapped in a roll of carpet that was dumped under a tree in the centre of the city in 2020.
Leonie Walner who lived in the city of Wiener Neustadt near Austria’s capital Vienna, along with her parents and her four siblings aged 15, 17, 19 and 19 at the time, was reportedly raped and brutally attacked by four Afghan men before being left to die in the street on June 26 2020.
Three of the Afghans were later arrested in Austria, but Zubaidullah was arrested following the international manhunt.
Police investigation revealed that the schoolgirl met two of the suspects at Danube Canal in the city of Vienna, where they all took ecstasy on June 25. They then took the schoolgirl to an apartment in Vienna’s 22nd district named Donaustadt, where they were joined by two other suspects.
The men gave Leonie more drugs in the apartment to “make her compliant” and sexually assaulted her. They then rolled her body in a carpet and disposing of it on the street about 100 metres from the apartment.
A post mortem reportedly found that she had been given a “lethal” overdose of ecstasy and cannabis.
22-year-old Zubaidullah reportedly fled to Dunkirk in France before boarding a people traffickers boat across the Channel to the UK. He gained access to the country illegally, using a fake name to slip past immigration officials in Dover before being put up by the government in the Ibis hotel in Whitechapel, East London.
A tip off from Austrian authorities led to him being apprehended in a British hotel. A court has now ruled that he will be extradited to Austria to face trial for the gang rape and murder of the teenager.
Commenting on the development, Florian Hoellwarth, the lawyer for Leonie’s parents, said: “as expected, the extradition request was granted by the court in London.” Hoellwarth added “the extradition decision is not final” before explaining that Zubaidullah has seven days to file an appeal.