Ghanaian Refugee accused of raping was being deported from Germany

A Ghanaian asylum seeker suspected of raping a woman in a nature reserve in Germany had received notice he would be deported just a few days before the attack.

The man spotted a young couple camping in the nature reserve where the River Sieg flows into the Rhine, near Bonn in western Germany.

He forced his way into the couple's tent, threatened them with a tree saw and ordered them to hand over their valuables.

After robbing them he told the 23-year-old woman to come outside, where he raped her and forced her boyfriend to watch.

The suspect was arrested on Saturday in nearby Siegburg after a man recognised the asylum seeker from a composite picture of the sex attacker.

But it has now emerged that the 31-year-old, who cannot be named due to Germany's strict privacy laws, had been served notice by the German authorities ten days the attack that he would face deportation to Italy as his asylum application had been rejected.

He arrived in Italy in January but his asylum application was immediately rejected but by then he had made the journey to Kassel in Germany.

The suspect lived for a time in asylum seeker housing accommodation in the town of Sankt Augustin, near Bonn.

But local media have questioned why he was not immediately deported.

Vanessa Nolte, of the Cologne district authorities, said: 'On 23 March he received the order, on 24th March he appealed it.'

Bonn police spokesman Robert Scholten said: 'As well as from the rape, we found a lot of DNA samples at the crime scene, which are clearly from the arrested man.'