Three men arrested after gang rape streamed live on Facebook

Three men have been arrested after a gang rape in Sweden was allegedly broadcast live on Facebook.

The men aged 18, 20 and 24 have been detained after being arrested in an apartment in Stockholm where the assaulted woman was present at the time. The rape was reportedly broadcast live in a closed Facebook group with over 60 thousand members and police are urging for people who have access to the footage to hand it in. Several members of the Facebook group alerted police when they saw the post. According to Sweden’s state broadcaster SVT, a second video was also broadcast live to Facebook in which the woman states that she had not been raped. This was still being filmed when the police entered the flat.

“My heart broke,” Linda Johansson, who saw the second of the broadcasts, told SVT. “The girl was sitting in front of the camera while the guy who filmed her tried to make her deny that she had been raped. "He was putting the words in her mouth. He was extremely threatening and laughed throughout the film.”

The assaulted woman, believed to be in her 30s, was The victim, taken to hospital both for her safety and to collect evidence. The same Facebook group was previously under investigation when a group of school children sent a live broadcast in which they threatened to shoot another pupil.