Berlin (AFP) - The German government Tuesday condemned dozens of apparently coordinated sexual assaults against women on New Year's Eve in the western city of Cologne blamed on Arab men but warned against anti-migrant scapegoating.

Justice Minister Heiko Mass called for a thorough investigation of the rash of attacks, ranging from groping to at least one reported rape, allegedly committed in a large crowd of revellers during year-end festivities at the city's main train station.

"This represents a new dimension of crime that we will have to get to grips with," he told reporters, adding that the assaults had appeared to be "coordinated".

"The authorities are working intensively to determine who was behind this."

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

"This is not about where someone is from but what they did," he said.

"Making an issue out of it, lumping it together with the refugee issue, is nothing but exploitation. Now is the time to determine the facts and then decide on the necessary consequences."

Police in Cologne said they had received 90 criminal complaints by Tuesday and quoted witnesses as saying that groups of 20-30 young men "who appeared to be of Arab origin" had surrounded victims, assaulted them and in several cases robbed them.

"We assume more people will come forward," a police spokesman told German news agency DPA.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said he was also stunned by the "despicable" attacks.

"However this must not lead to refugees of whatever origin, who are seeking our protection from persecution, being placed under general suspicion."

Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker called a crisis meeting with political officials and police Tuesday after the case made national headlines.

In mid-October, Reker was stabbed in the neck in an attack apparently over her welcoming stance toward refugees.

Germany took in around one million asylum seekers in 2015, most of them fleeing war-ravaged Syria.

Chancellor Angela Merkel in her televised New Year's address rallied Germans to continue to welcome the newcomers despite mounting criticism and reject right-wing populists whipping up anti-migrant sentiment.

seems odd how the liberals try to change the tune to blame "right wing populists" instead of the real problem at hand...

"The authorities are working intensively to determine who was behind this."

Just five arrests have been made by German police after central Cologne was transformed into a war-zone on New Year’s Eve, as an estimated 1,000 migrants celebrated by launching fireworks into crowds and sexually assaulting German women caught up in the chaos.

The sordid details of the horrifying sexual assaults and attacks made against ordinary Germans by large gangs of migrants in Cologne in the early hours of Friday morning are just now emerging.

Far from a small number of sex assaults reported to have been made by German speaking men in initial reports on New Year’s Day, dozens of women are now reported to have been molested and “raped”, while dozens more men have been assaulted and robbed.

One victim, 28 year old 'Katja L' spoke of her ordeal as she tried to make her way to the waiting room of Cologne railway station with two other girls and a boyfriend in the early hours of new year’s day. She told Der Express – one of the largest regional newspapers: "When we came out of the station, we were very surprised by the group that met us there". She said the group was "exclusively young foreign(muslim) men". Keeping close to her friends, they pressed on:

"We then walked through this group of men. There was an alley through [the men] which we walked through. Suddenly I felt a hand on my buttocks, then on my breasts, in the end, I was groped everywhere. It was a nightmare. Although we shouted and beat them, the guys did not stop. I was desperate and think I was touched around 100 times in the 200 meters."

"Fortunately I wore a jacket and trousers. a skirt would probably have been torn away from me".

As Katja L and other witnesses who have since come forward said, as they were molested by the gang the men were laughing and pulling their hair, and there were shouts of "ficki, ficki" hurled at them as they were called "sluts". Treating her as "fair game", there had been so many men groping at her Katja L said she would be unable to positively identify any of the perpetrators to the police.

Others were less lucky. One woman had her tights and underwear torn off by the crowd, and a police source quoted said there had been "rapes" at the station that night.

So far, police have identified 80 victims of the gangs, 35 of which were subjected to sex attacks. Others were assaulted or robbed. Officers suspect there are many more as of yet unreported cases from the night, and are appealing for victims to come forward after their ordeals.

A press conference hosted by Cologne’s chief of police Wolfgang Albers this afternoon confirmed the attacks had been perpetrated by migrants, all of whom were found to be carrying official immigration paperwork by police officers at the time. 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".

In addition to the sex attacks, there were several brawls between migrant gangs at the railway station, and large numbers of fireworks were fired into the crowds and at the hapless police. A witness said: "There were thousands of men. Simply firing into the crowd, and as my girlfriend and I wanted to get us to safety, but they blocked our way. We were so scared! We fled from the station".

Despite dozens of men and women having been attacked, the area being comprehensively monitored by CCTV, and having thousands of potential suspects, Cologne police have arrested just five men so far in relation to the new year's eve attacks.

The police chief may yet have serious questions to answer on the attacks, which follow a year of record breaking migration, after it emerged that just ten officers were dispatched to the station after the report of a gang sex assault in the early hours of the morning, and unverified accusations started to circulate on-line of officers even ridiculing a victim for not having been vigilant enough to avoid being attacked. Breitbart London has approached Cologne police for comment.

The police union said of the incidents: "This is a completely new dimension of violence. This is something we have not known".

Before the New Year some German towns cancelled fireworks displays for fear of upsetting migrants who would associate the loud noises with the sounds of a war zone.

Credit to Breitbart

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/04/revealed-1000-migrants-brawl-rape-sexually-assault-steal-one-german-train-station-new-years-eve/


http://nunezreport.blogspot.com/

Coming soon to a city near you.

might have already... hard to know with our state sponsored media...

your right,

gonna get worse before it will get better!

Germany has drinking and groping on new years eve too?...what a surprise,,,

i've never been groped by strange, foreign women on NYE...

THREE TOWNS. All MEN of Arab & North African descent.

1,000 men in the town of Cologne 80 women raped at a train station (repeatedly)
The other 2 towns... ?

Ezra Levant Show: Muslim migrant rape and riot spree on New Years Eve http://youtu.be/CScAkhiSmok/ 37:16

1,000+ Migrants Brawl, Rape, Sexually Assault on New Year's Eve http://youtu.be/n2_xjNxk-bc/ 22:10

1000+ migrants brawl rape, Sexually assault, steal, at one German train station New Years Eve http://youtu.be/4F7MVGtT9VA/ 12:13

Migrants Sexually Assault Numerous Woman in Germany Cologne, Hamburg & Stuttgart http://youtu.be/s18gAn8dQUA/

(English Translation) Germany Cologne - 1000 Migrants http://youtu.be/oPfHBsq4oSw/

Updates :

Cologne-Style’ Attacks on Women Reported in Austria, Switzerland

http://m.sputniknews.com/europe/20160108/1032826782/switzerland-austria-assaults.html/

Shell Shocked: Germans Avoid Public Places After Sex Attacks

http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160108/1032841779/germany-attacks-fears.html/

--------------------------------------------
LIVE FEED LINK TO PROTEST IN COLOGNE, GERMANY

http://youtu.be/3ki7j3E9dg4/ 00:36

PEGIDA rally & counter-protest in Cologne following New Years Eve Attacks

http://youtu.be/WTcIsD7ctug/ 49:56 Streamed live aprox. 1hr ago.

Supporters of the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) are rallying outside Cologne’s main train station. A counter-protest is taking place at the same location. The demonstrations come in the wake of mass assaults against women that took place during New Year's Eve celebrations.

Yeah, it's a bad scene. A real mess.

I only hope that the Germans do a better job of responding to it, than a lot of people fussing about it want them to do.

The massive influx of "refugees" into Europe has been clumsily handled from the start, and this is probably at least partially a result of that.

Here in the US, the danger is (I think) in the same way, that due to trying to avoid tax increases and unpopular government expenditure to deal with "them ferners," political leaders are trying to deal with everything on the cheap, instead of doing what's necessary to ACTUALLY deal with the problem.

Remember when the Bush administration (and NO, I'M NOT BLAMING THEM FOR EVERYTHING, JUST USING THEM AS AN ILLUSTRATION) said that they could keep low taxes, AND conduct two foreign wars on the cheap, even saying they'd use private enterprise principles to make the wars pay for themselves? Remember how that all proved to be the opposite of true, and helped drive the American economy into a chasm of a ditch, from which we are still trying to extract ourselves?

Same potential problem here. The "refugees" are a real problem. They are a complicated problem. There is no "cheap" way to deal with them, and that includes grabbing them on sight and throwing them out of the country. Even without legal costs, that action is expensive, and requires that your officials find someone willing to LET you dump them into THEIR back yard.

I don't think these are Germans.

not according to the News coming out of Cologne and other German and European Cities!

CBCNews.

Cologne mass sex assaults appear planned, co-ordinated, German justice minister says
Merkel's open-door policy scrutinized amid assaults, news Paris knife attacker lived in Germany

The Associated Press
8 Hours Ago

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas delivers remarks in Berlin on the assaults in Cologne, Germany, on New Year's Eve. He said it is possible the attacks are linked to similar offences in other cities.

German authorities need to quickly determine whether a string of New Year's Eve sexual assaults and robberies in Cologne blamed largely on foreigners may be linked to similar offences in other cities, the justice minister said in comments published Sunday.

Authorities and witnesses say the attackers were among about 1,000 people, mostly men, gathered at Cologne's central train station, some of whom broke off into small groups that groped and robbed women.

German riot police clash with anti-Islam protesters
PEGIDA: Who is behind Germany's growing anti-Islam campaign?
Angela Merkel vows action on 'unacceptable' Cologne sex assaults
Germany says nearly 1.1. million people registered as asylum seekers last year
Merkel wants to 'drastically decrease' number of refugees coming to Germany
"If such a horde gathers in order to commit crimes, that appears in some form to be planned," Justice Minister Heiko Maas told the newspaper Bild. "Nobody can tell me that this was not co-ordinated or prepared."

The attacks are still being investigated, but police have said their focus is on suspects of primarily North African origin, which has put pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and its open-door policy to asylum seekers. Nearly 1.1 million refugees and migrants arrived in Germany in 2015 alone.

Police use a water cannon to drive back anti-immigration supporters during Saturday's protest in Cologne. (Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)
1 of 7Hide captionToggle Fullscreen
She announced a proposal Saturday that would make it easier to deport refugees and migrants who commit crimes, which still needs parliamentary approval.

Cologne police said Sunday that 516 criminal complaints had now been filed with them in connection to the New Year's Eve attacks, about 40 per cent of which involve allegations of sexual offences.

They also announced that on Saturday night they arrested a 19-year-old Moroccan man on allegations he stole a 23-year-old woman's cellphone on New Year's Eve, and had identified 19 other suspects by name. Police said the Moroccan, who they said has been involved in various crimes since 2013, isn't accused of a sexual offence, but the investigation is ongoing.

Paris knife attacker linked to Germany 

In a separate development that seemed likely to provide more grist for opponents of Merkel's policies, police in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia on Saturday raided an apartment at a shelter for asylum seekers in Recklinghausen that they said had been occupied by an extremist who French police fatally shot on Thursday as he ran up to a Paris police station wielding a butcher's knife and wearing a fake explosives vest.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in remarks Sunday that the man was also believed to have lived in Luxembourg and Switzerland.

The mug shot provided Sunday, Jan. 10, 2016 by the police in Duesseldorf, western Germany, shows a man that applied for asylum in Germany with name Walid Salihi. The man was fatally shot by French police on Thursday as he ran up to a Paris police station wielding a butcher's knife and wearing a fake explosives vest. He had first entered Germany in 2013 after living for five years illegally in France, and had gone by at least seven names, identifying himself as a Tunisian, Moroccan and Georgian. (Landeskriminalamt Recklinghausen via Associated Press)
North Rhine-Westphalia state police chief Uwe Jacob described the suspect as a smalltime criminal known to authorities by several aliases, who had a record that included weapons charges, drug trafficking and causing bodily harm and had spent at least a month in jail.

He said there are no indications the man was part of an extremist network, but that a self-drawn Islamic State flag was found in his room, the dpa news agency reported.

At a news conference in Duesseldorf, Jacob told reporters that the man had first entered Germany in 2013 after living for five years illegally in France, and had gone by at least seven names, identifying himself as a Tunisian, Moroccan and Georgian. He lived in several German cities and moved to Recklinghausen at the beginning of last August.

Suspects called 'modern-day nomads'

Separately, police in Hamburg are also investigating sexual assaults and thefts in the St. Pauli district similar to those in Cologne, which occurred on a smaller scale in the northern city on New Year's Eve. Authorities in Sweden and Finland are also investigating similar incidents in their countries.

"All connections must be carefully checked," Maas said. "There is a suspicion that a particular date was chosen with expected crowds. That would then be a new dimension."

Of an initial 31 suspects detained by police for questioning, 18 were asylum seekers but there were also two Germans, an American and others, and none of them were accused specifically of committing sexual assaults.


Women shout slogans and hold up a placard that reads 'Against Sexism - Against Racism' as they march through the main railways station of Cologne on Jan. 5. About 90 women have reported being robbed, threatened or sexually molested at the New Year's celebrations outside Cologne's cathedral by young men.

Police have released few details, but Bild on Sunday said one, a 22-year-old Tunisian, was registered at a refugee centre in a neighbouring state, while two Moroccans aged 18 and 23, were apparently in the country illegally, according to their attorney.

"Our clients are modern nomads," attorney Ingo Lindemann told the newspaper. "They're not war refugees, but more like grown street children who move with the flow of refugees across Europe."

Cologne police wouldn't confirm the report on the three and Lindemann didn't immediately return a phone call or an email.

Participants of a women's flash mob demonstrate against racism and sexism in Cologne, Germany, Saturday, January 9, 2016.


COLOGNE MASS SEX ASSAULTS APPEAR PLANNED, CO-ORDINATED, GERMAN JUSTICE MINISTER SAYS


More On This Story

German police clash with anti-Islam protesters
VIDEO 1:00
JAN 9

Anti-Islam protesters clash with police in Cologne
VIDEO 2:32
JAN 9

German riot police clash with anti-Islam protesters
JAN 10

PEGIDA: Who is behind Germany's growing anti-Islam campaign?
JAN 15

Cologne attacks: German police say New Year's assaults may be linked to criminal network
JAN 6

Germany says nearly 1.1 million people registered as asylum-seekers in 2015
JAN 6

Angela Merkel wants to 'drastically decrease' number of refugees coming to Germany


World - CBC News http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/world/cologne-assaults-1.3397483/

What about by strange foreign men?

Nope, it's mostly the Muslim refugees they are letting into the country.

News
Europe : 11 January 2016

Cologne attacks: New Year's Eve crime cases top 500

The handling of the New Year attacks by police in Cologne has been strongly criticised
German police say the number of criminal complaints filed after the events on New Year's Eve in Cologne has risen to 516 - 40% of which relate to allegations of sexual assault
.
Police in Cologne investigating the crimes are focussing on people of North African origin, they say.
On Sunday evening six Pakistanis and a Syrian man came under attack in the centre of the western German city.

Angela Merkel's immigration policy has come under criticism since the attacks.
Around 1.1 million asylum seekers arrived in Germany in 2015.

The scale of the assaults on women in Cologne and other German cities on 31 December has shocked the country, and police handling of the events has been sharply criticised.
Riot police used water cannon to disperse anti-migrant protesters in Cologne on Saturday.
The attacks on Sunday took place in the early evening. In the first, a group of around 20 people attacked six Pakistanis, two of whom had to be treated in hospital.
Separately, five people injured a Syrian man who did not need hospital treatment.

Some Muslims on Sunday carried signs denouncing the new year attacks in Cologne - the one on the right says "Islam against sexism"

Anti-migrants protesters took to the streets of Cologne on Saturday
The higher figures came as German authorities were urged to find out whether the series of New Year's Eve sexual assaults and robberies in Cologne were linked to similar crimes in other cities.
Justice Minister Heiko Maas told the Bild newspaper on Sunday that he was convinced the attacks were pre-arranged.
"If such a horde gathers in order to commit crimes, that appears in some form to be planned,'' he said. "Nobody can tell me that this was not co-ordinated or prepared."
Women describe 'terrible' assaults.

Cologne mayor's 'code of conduct' attacked

The search for answers
Authorities and witnesses say the attackers were among about 1,000 people, mostly men, who congregated at Cologne's central train station before breaking off into small groups that molested and robbed women.

Ms Merkel's "open door" policy had already attracted criticism from within her party before the Cologne attacks
Victims described chaos as dozens of sexual assaults and robberies were carried out with little apparent response from the authorities around Cologne station.
Similar attacks to those seen in Cologne were also reported in Hamburg and in Stuttgart on New Year's Eve. In Bielefeld, hundreds of men tried to force their way into nightclubs, Die Welt reported (in German).
Police said several women had alleged sexual assault.
On Friday, the chief of police for Cologne was suspended. Wolfgang Albers had been accused of holding back information about the attacks, in particular about the origin of the suspects.

Cologne attacks: Pegida and police clash at migrant protest
9 January 2016

Women describe 'terrible' assaults
7 January 2016

Cologne's search for answers
8 January 2016

Cologne Mayor's 'code of conduct' angers many
6 January 2016

Video New Year's Eve Cologne attack 'left me scarred for life'
6 January 2016

Video Shock over assaults
5 January 2016
Europe

Cologne attackers 'were migrant men'
11 January 2016
From Europe
Full article Cologne attackers 'were migrant men'

Cologne attacks: New Year's Eve crime cases top 500 -

BBC News http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35277249/

--------------
Cologne attacks' profound impact on Europe

- BBC News http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35261988/


* Please note: this is the BBC talking & there is ' Word play & Down Play ' *

Angela Merkel needs to be held accountable for this reign of terror being unleashed by these crimminals. They are like the plague spreading across all of Europe!

doubt she has left much of a Chink in her Armor!
Politicians usually can fall back on dozens of "Expert Opinions" to shield themselves.
If Politician were legally responsible for their failures in Office,instead of only gross Criminal Behavior(Sometimes not even for that),you'd see a lot less Grandstanding and Busybodying by them!