German official: assaults not linked to organized crime

Cologne police say 516 criminal complaints have now been filed with them in connection to the New Year’s attacks.

 The changes are yet to be approved by the cabinet or Parliament and the interior minister acknowledged that deportations could be problematic, especially if a person’s country of origin isn’t willing to receive them. These include homicide, bodily harm, sexual assault, violent theft and serial shoplifting. Youth sentences would be covered too.

Previously, foreigners could be deported only if they were found guilty of crimes punishable by a sentence of one year or more.

Justice minister Heiko Maas warned that “those who hound refugees have obviously just been waiting for the events of Cologne” and were now “shamelessly exploiting” the attacks.

“We are vulnerable because we don’t have the orderliness and management of the refugees under control yet”, Merkel said in a speech to a business group in the western city of Mainz.

The assaults on New Year’s Eve, which are the subject of an ongoing investigation, have emboldened right-wing groups and unsettled members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party, raising pressure on her to crack down forcefully on migrants who commit crimes.

The statement against comes after Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would consider making Germany’s immigration laws tougher, in the wake of the Cologne attacks.

Authorities and witnesses said the New Year’s Eve attackers were among a group of about 1,000 people, described as predominantly Arab and North African men, who gathered at Cologne’s central train station.

Germany is also keen to ensure that migrants who are not granted asylum leave the country as quickly as possible. Among those, 10 arrived in Germany in 2015 along with 1 million other asylum seekers.

Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, asked the prime minister whether he saw any cultural dimensions in the assaults, given that police have said most of the suspects were foreign nationals. Twenty-two of the 32 suspects identified by police in the Cologne crowd are asylum seekers, according to the Interior Ministry in Berlin.

The Israelis however, were only two victims among several in a string of xenophobic attacks across Germany in the past 48 hours, police confirmed on Tuesday.

One senior officer told me they’re relying on mobile phone footage taken that night to identify the perpetrators.

Germany’s Bild newspaper reprinted a police protocol of Cologne’s night of chaos in yesterday’s edition. He stressed, though, “that it must be proven that they are Algerians, and that can lengthen the matter”.

Thousands of far right protesters on Monday attributed the inflow of refugees in Germany for the Cologne assaults.

Holger Muench, the head of Germany’s federal crime-fighting agency, said security officials are investigating to what extent the assaults were an organized event. “That would have a different quality for me”.