Afghan who crossed the channel in a dinghy will face trial for murder of 13-year-old
An Afghan immigrant is to face trial Austria for strangling a 13-year-old girl after he escaped across the channel in a dingy.
Raculi Zubaidullah, 23, is accused with three other suspects of drugging Leonie Walner with ecstasy pills in Vienna before suffocating her and dumping her body in a rolled up carpet.
The three men were arrested after they bragged to a friend about having wild sex with a young girl.
The friend reported them to the police but Zubaidullah fled to the UK, crossing the English channel on 18 July 2021.
He gave the name of Safeullah Azizullah when he was questioned by
officials.
Zubaidullah gave the same name when he was arrested eleven days later at a hotel in Whitechapel after an international arrest warrant was issued.
But on the way to the station confirmed that he was in fact Raculi Zubaidullah saying: ‘I not go back, no.’
No formal charges have yet been filed against Zubaidullah because Austrian police are waiting to interview him about his role in the gang rape and murder.
Initial investigations revealed that Leonie met Zubaidullah and one of his accomplices at the Danube Canal, Vienna, on 25 June 2021.
They three took ecstasy and went back to Zubaidullah’s apartment in Donaustadt, in Vienna’s 22nd district, where they were joined by two other men, 18 and 23.
They gave the schoolgirl more drugs to ‘make her compliant’ before she was murdered and raped.
The body was found the next day in Wiener Neustadt a town 35 miles away.
Zubaidullah appeared by video link from Wandsworth prison to hear
District Judge Michael Snow tell him: ‘I’m afraid I’ve rejected your challenges and as a consequence I must order your surrender to Austria to stand trial in respect of these allegations.
‘You can appeal against my decision, you have seven days in which to do so. That period is absolute and will not be extended.
‘If you do not appeal you will be surrendered within 17 days of today unless I or another judge extends that period.
‘You must remain in custody pending your surrender.’
Jonathan Swain, prosecuting, said earlier ‘It is alleged that Mr Zubaidullah is suspected of having committed an offence on 25 and 26 June 2021 in Vienna in what is described as deliberate and wilful collaboration with three other named individuals.
‘The two offences are firstly having coerced by force an individual to engage in and acquiesce to by administering to her at least seven ecstasy pills and after that performing vaginal intercourse.
‘He grabbed and choked her until she was no longer able to breathe and was suffocated and therefore ultimately died as a result.’
‘The second offence arises from the sexual intercourse itself.’
A warrant was issued by the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office in Austria on 29 July 2021 and it was certified by the National Crime Agency on 30 July 2021.
At an earlier hearing, when asked if he consented to his extradition to Austria, Zubaidullah waved his arms vigorously, shouting ‘No no!’.
Speaking through a Farsi interpreter, Zubaidullah told the court: ‘All I know is the police arrested me and took me to the prison. I don’t know why.’
