Probe blames migrants for Cologne New Year assaults
Print Edition
German authorities said yesterday that nearly all the suspects in a rash of New Year’s Eve violence against women in Cologne were “of foreign origin,” as foreigners came under attack amid surging tensions.
Ralf Jaeger, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, released initial findings of a criminal probe over the crime spree that has piled pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel over her liberal stance towards refugees. “Witness accounts and the report by the police as well as findings by the federal police indicate that nearly all the people who committed these crimes were of foreign origin,” he said.
Although no formal charges have been laid, Jaeger said the attackers emerged from a group of more than 1,000 “Arab and North African” men who gathered between the main railway station and the city’s iconic Gothic cathedral during the year-end festivities.
Amid concerns over reprisal assaults, police said a mob attacked a group of six Pakistanis on Sunday in Cologne, two of whom had to be hospitalized.
Shortly afterwards, five unidentified assailants attacked a 39-year-old Syrian national.
After far-right protests erupted in Cologne during the weekend, a sister group of the xenophobic PEGIDA movement was to hold another rally in the eastern city of Leipzig.
In the face of outrage over the New Year’s Eve violence, Merkel has taken a tough line against convicted refugees.
She has signalled her backing for changes to the law to ease expulsion rules, with officials within her ruling coalition expected to swiftly negotiate the proposals this week.
Police said late on Sunday that more than a week on from New Year’s Eve, some 516 complaints had now been lodged.
Witnesses described terrifying scenes of hundreds of women running a gauntlet of groping hands and lewd insults in the mob violence.
The scale of the Cologne assaults has shocked Germany and put a spotlight on the 1.1 million asylum seekers who arrived in the country last year.
It has also fuelled fear, with a poll published by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper saying that 39 percent of those surveyed felt police did not provide sufficient protection for the public at large, while 57 percent did.
And just under half (49 percent) believed the same sort of mob violence could hit their hometown, reported the newspaper which headlined its article with the question: “Is the New Year’s Eve scandal the result of wrong policies?”
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