Germany says many mob attack suspects were asylum seekers

Germany today said most suspects in the mob violence that marred Cologne's New Year's Eve celebrations were asylum seekers, fuelling calls to quickly deport criminal migrants.
Unsettled by a record refugee influx, Germany has reacted with shock to news that women had to run a frightful gauntlet of groping, insults and robberies in an aggressive and drunken crush of around 1,000 men.
A week after the chaotic scenes outside Cologne railway station, federal police said they had identified 31 suspects whose alleged offences were "mostly theft and causing bodily harm".
Eighteen of them are asylum seekers, the interior ministry said.

Among the suspects are nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, two Germans and one citizen each from Iraq, Serbia and the United States, ministry spokesman Tobias Plate said.
Federal police had received several complaints about sexual offences, but "the perpetrators of these have not been identified," he said at a press conference.

Cologne police have separately confirmed receiving over 120 complaints of assaults, ranging from groping to two alleged rapes, calling them apparently coordinated attacks during the year-end festivities.
About three-quarters of the cases involved sexual offences, while others related to theft or bodily harm.
Victims and eyewitnesses had since the beginning blamed men of "Arab or North African" appearance, inflaming a heated public debate about Germany's ability to integrate the nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers it took in last year.

Right-wing populists have charged that Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal migration policy has fuelled crime and destabilised society.
Merkel's spokesman George Streiter said it was "important that the whole truth comes out, that nothing is withheld or glossed over", but also warned that migrants must not be put under general suspicion or collectively blamed.
"Primarily, this is not about refugees but about criminality," he said, noting that most asylum seekers in Germany had come seeking protection.