Police Shut Tel Aviv Nightclub After Another Alleged Rape

The police shut down Tel Aviv’s Allenby 40 club on Sunday, a few days after a woman said she was raped in a toilet stall there.

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The suspect, a man in his twenties from Or Yehuda, was arrested Sunday and is being held in custody.

According to a preliminary investigation, the woman, 18, met the suspect at the bar. However, it is not clear, after the two met, whether they went together to the restroom or the suspect followed the woman there. The woman told police that the man forced her to have sex with him in the stall.

The police have also questioned other people present at the club at the time, some of whom confirmed that they saw the suspect and the woman in the lavatory and that the woman seemed to be distraught when she left the place.

Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court Judge Yaron Gat wrote in his decision extending the suspect’s detention that an examination of the case led to a reasonable suspicion that the suspect had committed the offense, and that under the circumstances he constituted a danger that warranted remaining behind bars for the time being.

In September, a film clip was disseminated in the press and social media in which a woman was seen having sex on the bar at Allenby 40, after which the club was also shuttered for a time. A police investigation concluded that the act was consensual, although the woman was drunk, and no indictments were issued.