BOULOGNE, France (AFP) — A man who raped a Canadian journalism student reporting on illegal migrants in the French port of Calais may have fled to Britain or another nearby country, a prosecutor said Friday.
The suspect was believed to be of Middle Eastern origin, a migrant or possibly a people smuggler, who spoke good French and may have been living for some time in the Calais region, said prosecutor Philippe Muller.
"If he is a migrant, it is likely he has already left, perhaps for England or for another French port or perhaps he has headed to Belgium or the Netherlands," Muller told a press conference in the nearby town of Boulogne.
The suspect has not been identified but investigators have fingerprints and DNA samples. Around 100 migrants have been questioned by police since Tuesday.
The victim, who is believed to be 31 years old, and a witness helped police draw identical pictures of the suspect, which have been sent to French ports, British police and the international police agency Interpol.
The victim, a student in a London journalism school, was still in France on Friday. She was helping police investigate the attack on Tuesday evening as she photographed migrants at a makeshift camp in a forest nicknamed "The Jungle," Muller said.
"The Jungle" is a well-known meeting point for human traffickers and illegal immigrants looking for an opportunity to cross the Channel into Britain.
"She is in shock, she is suffering, but she is also very courageous," said Muller.
The wanted suspect was one of the men she was photographing, he said, adding that the young woman had made three previous visits to the camp which is close to the Calais ferry terminal.
On the pretext of wanting to show her something, the attacker led her away from the group and into one of the makeshift shelters where he raped her and hit her in the face, said Muller.
The attack lasted half an hour and only ended when another migrant approached the shelter.
Monique Delannoy, from the Belle Etoile aid group which provides meals to migrants in Calais, said she always advised journalists not to visit "The Jungle" unaccompanied.
Delannoy said that in mid-August, her charity had counted 450 migrants in and around the forest, all but 30 of them men.
She said they were Afghans, Kurds, Iranians and Africans.
Calais became a destination for migrants in the late 1990s with the opening of the Sangatte refugee camp, right next to the entrance to the Channel Tunnel linking France and Britain.
The camp was finally closed in 2002 but migrants still come to Calais in their attempts to get to Britain.
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