A 21-year-old Iranian migrant bit an Austrian police officer inside a detention cell in Vienna on Sunday right after police tried to come to his aid.
According to police spokesman Markus Dittrich, the young man began raging inside his holding cell and tore off his T-shirt. After wrapping the scraps of his torn T-shirt around his neck, he passed out inside his cell.
The police came inside his cell to aid him, when he sprang up and attacked them, according to Kronen Zeitung. The Iranian migrant then bit one of the officers on his back before officers managed to subdue him a violent struggle. The officer required hospital treatment for the bite wound.
The Iranian was originally arrested for undisclosed administrative offenses.
Police have not been the only victims of rising migrant crimes. Some experts pointed to Afghanistan migrants as particularly troublesome given the background of their country.
The New York Times also wrote in the lead up to 2016’s presidential elections in Austria that migrant crimes were starkly dividing the country. According to the Times:
By any measure, the string of crimes has been terrible. A grandmother of three, walking her dog, raped along a riverbank. A 10-year-old boy sexually assaulted at a public swimming pool. A 21-year-old student gang raped near the giant Ferris wheel at Vienna’s famed Prater park. A 54-year-old woman beaten to death on the street.
The fact that the crimes were committed by recent migrants from war zones and an immigrant who had lived illegally in the country for years added an especially volatile element to the political climate ahead of the presidential election.
That same year also saw nine Iraqi migrants were also arrested for the gang rape of a 28-year-old German woman in Vienna on New Year’s Day.
Neighboring Germany has also seen a dramatic rise in the proportion of migrant crimes, including attacks on police officers.
