German woman reports being raped by foreign man in Saigon

A German woman has filed a report accusing a man of raping her at his apartment in Saigon, prompting police to launch a high-profile assault investigation.

The city police said on Monday that they are working with officers in Nha Be District on the outskirts of the city and have taken the man in for questioning.

The identities of both the alleged victim and the suspect have not been revealed.

The woman, 23, said she is in Vietnam on vacation and met the alleged perpetrator, who has only been identified as a black foreigner, on Bui Vien, the city’s backpacker street in District 1.

He invited her to his apartment in Nha Be, where he forcefully raped her, she said. She said she left immediately after the assault.

Neighbors in the apartment building also said they believed she had been sexually assaulted.

Convicted rapists can receive anything from two years in jail to the death sentence in Vietnam, depending on the seriousness of the attack and the damage caused to the victim.

It’s not clear whether this case will go down as another he-said-she-said like the incident involving a Norwegian woman who accused a local man of raping her after a drunken night out in the central resort town of Mui Ne in March.

She provided test results that found sperm in her vagina, but the accused said they had consensual sex.

No developments on the case have been reported thus far.