Germany stunned by spate of New Year’s sex assaults

The German government condemns 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 calls 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 revelers 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 tells 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 says police were still working to identify them.

“This is not about where someone is from but what they did,” he says.

“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 say 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 tells German news agency DPA.

— AFP