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Police hunting a serial rapist in the French city of Marseille have used DNA evidence to arrest two men, but are unable to say which is the culprit because the pair are genetically identical.

After tracking down a suspect with help from video surveillance and a victim’s traceable cellphone, investigators discovered he lived with his identical twin brother, and now face the prospect of lengthy and expensive scientific testing to distinguish between their genetic codes, if that is even possible.

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Identified only as Yohan and Elwin, 24-year-old brothers of mixed ethnicity, the suspects deny assaulting six women, aged 22 to 76, between September and January. The victims identified their attacker from photographs, but could not tell the brothers apart.

“It’s a rather rare case for the alleged perpetrators to be identical twins,” said Emmanuel Kiehl, the chief investigator in the case. “We must determine the exact role of each one.” He said current techniques for identifying the differences between DNA of identical twins were onerous, costly and rarely conducted in French laboratories.