Police have arrested a 22-year-old man in connection with the rape last week of a woman on Weesperzijde in Amsterdam.

The woman was taking a walk along the Weespertrekvaart around 0.30 am on Friday when she was accosted by an unknown man who then beat and raped her.

The man then ran off in the direction of the centre of Amsterdam. Police said in a statement that the man may have been around a place where sex workers were active prior to the attack. The woman, who needed hospital care for her injuries, said he had made a comment to that effect.

Police started a large-scale investigation and, based on security camera footage, honed in on the suspect. He was subsequently found in an asylum seekers’ centre in the capital. The investigation is ongoing, and police are calling on witnesses to come forward.

The location of the attack is not far from where the body of 17-year-old Lisa was found earlier this week but police have not established a link between the two cases.

Abcoude attack

Lisa was cycling to her home in Abcoude in the early hours of Wednesday morning after a night out in Amsterdam when she was brutally attacked and killed.  She managed to call 112 shortly before the attack, but when police located her at 4 am, she was already dead.

Police are working on the assumption that there was a lone attacker who may also have travelled by bike. Lisa was filmed by roadside cameras for most of her journey, but there is no footage of the last seven minutes.

Police are calling on the drivers of a scooter, a light-coloured van and a Biro electric car, which were in the vicinity between 4.10 am en 4.30 am, to come forward as possible witnesses.

Separately, on Thursday, a 46-year-old man from Georgia was arrested at a house in Bunschoten for a serious sex attack on a woman in Zeist after police shared photos and footage of the man. Several labour migrants at the house recognised the man in the footage, they told the AD. He had been living at the house for a month and was not working, they said.