Cologne police chief condemns sex assaults on New Year’s Eve

Cologne police said at least 90 victims filed assault complaints, including one for rape.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas said Germany would not accept such attacks which he described as “a new scale of organized crime”. Chancellor Angela Merkel has loudly and publicly welcomed refugees, even as public opposition within her country mounts.

Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said she had called Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, to express her “outrage” over the violence, which she said required “a tough response from the state”.

“There is no indication that we are dealing with people who have moved here to Cologne as refugees”, said Reker, who was stabbed during her fall campaign for mayor by an anti-immigrant assailant over her support for admitting migrants.

Albers said that the incidents last week in Cologne constituted “a completely new dimension of crime“.

After a crisis meeting, Cologne mayor Reker said the perpetrators had acted “absolutely unacceptably” and women must continue to join celebrations but with more protection.

Mr. Albers said “the crimes have been committed by a group of people who mostly come from her in appearance from the North African and Arab countries”, and that he found the situation “intolerable”.

Asked by a journalist whether the attackers could have been refugees, Maas said police were still working to identify them.

According to witnesses, groups of 20-30 young men surrounded women during New Year’s festivities outside the main train station next to the Gothic cathedral, assaulted them and in many cases robbed them. What are you saying?

“Is this the “cosmopolitan and vibrant” Germany that Merkel wished for?” requested Frauke Petry, leader of the nationalist party Alternative for Germany. According to the police, the men knew each other and acted in groups. The women who were attacked screamed and tried to fight their way free, a man who had struggled to protect his girlfriend told German public television.

At a press conference on Tuesday, police said they had “no leads” on the offenders, but information led them to believe between 400 and 600 men gathered to drink alcohol and set off fireworks about 9pm on December 31.

She told the BBC: “They were trying to hug us, kiss us”.

Right-wing groups have called to halt admissions of migrants, while politicians urged people not to place refugees under blanket suspicion.

Over one million Arab, African and South Asian migrants entered Germany in the a year ago, sparking the anti-Islam Pegida movement. One man stole my friend’s bag.