Germany: 9 Algerians, 8 Moroccans charged for sexual harassment

Mohamad from Lebanon, left, and Nabil from Morocco in Cologne.

Far-right supporters in the eastern German city of Leipzig went on a rampage, vandalising buildings and setting cars on fire.

The angry scenes are a far cry from the summer, when Angela Merkel lifted asylum restrictions for Syrian refugees – a decision that led to the arrival of 1.1 million migrants and asylum seekers last year and was credited in part for making the Chancellor Time’s Person of the Year. A heavy police presence, with water canon at the ready, kept watch over the crowd, and separated them from a group of counter-demonstrators, as rain poured down.

The classes in the southern state of Bavaria were planned before the New Year’s Eve assaults on women in Cologne.

Two weeks after multiple attacks on women on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, the number of criminal complaints for theft, physical and sexual assault has risen to 653.

French investigators said on Friday the suspect appeared to have been identified by his family and was said to be a Tunisian named Tarek Belgacem.

Officials in the country have vowed to remove barriers to deporting those who come to Germany then commit crimes.

Mr de Maiziere said: “With this proposal we are significantly lowering the hurdles for the possible expulsion of foreigners who have committed crimes in Germany”.

The changes, which have to be approved by the cabinet and parliament, would mean that even a suspended prison sentence would be grounds for deportation if someone is found guilty of certain crimes.

Several women in Cologne were raped and the justice minister said the definition of the offence in German law was too narrow.

The march coincided with the one-year anniversary of the creation of Legida. “They don’t deserve to be lumped together with criminal foreigners”.

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.

Afterward, five men attacked and injured a man of Syrian descent, police said.

‘All signs point to these being north Africans and people from the Arab world, ‘ he added. Nineteen suspects have so far been identified, all of them migrants.

Currently, it is much more hard for Germany to deport immigrants to countries not deemed “safe”.

Wenzel Michalski, the Human Rights Watch director in Germany, said that the recent attacks on foreigners in Cologne is exactly what people feared would happen following the sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve.

She said Germans know that since the awful events of that night in Cologne, for integration to work, society needs to be open; but, she said, the refugees also need to be willing to follow the country’s rules and values.