Three men have been arrested for allegedly raping and robbing a foreign tourist on a minibus in Rio de Janeiro, according to police.
The woman was raped repeatedly over a six hour period in the minibus on Saturday morning, while her boyfriend was handcuffed and badly beaten.
“We got information about some of the places [the suspects] had been, based on bank receipts and transactions that they made,” police deputy Alexandre Braga said of the arrests.
“They would alternate driving the vehicle, two would commit rape in the back of the van and the violence against the boyfriend of the victim,” Brand said on Monday.
According to a police statement, the two victims were attacked as they rode public transportation in a seaside neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.
The statement said assailants forced other passengers out of a shared van and then sexually assaulted the foreign woman inside the vehicle before driving her and her male companion to the poor suburban neighbourhood of Sao Goncalo.
The victims’ nationalities have not been released, but local media reports have said the woman is American.
‘It wasn’t me’: One of the suspects was the driver of the mini bus and two of the men deny the charges. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. It was someone else, you know,” said Wallace Aparecido de Souza Silva, one of the arrested men.