German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday backed stricter laws to expel convicted refugees, while Cologne police said they have now recorded 379 cases of New Year’s Eve violence — ranging from groping to theft to two reported rapes — with asylum seekers and illegal migrants making up the majority of suspects.
Vowing tough action, Merkel declared that any refugee handed a jail term — even if it was a suspended sentence — should be kicked out of the nation.
“If the law does not suffice, then the law must be changed,” she said, pledging action to protect not just German citizens, but innocent refugees too.
Witnesses described terrifying scenes of hundreds of women running a gauntlet of groping hands, lewd insults and robberies in the mob violence.
Of the cases reported so far, 40 percent related to sexual violence, Cologne police said in a statement.
“Those in focus of criminal police investigations are mostly people from North African countries. The majority of them are asylum seekers and people who are in Germany illegally,” police added, confirming witness accounts.
The allegations have stoked criticism of Merkel’s liberal open-door policy — which brought 1.1 million new asylum seekers to Germany last year.
Merkel has so far refused to abandon her welcoming stance toward war refugees, but on Saturday had tough words for law breakers.
“If a refugee flouts the rules, then there must be consequences, that means that they can lose their residence right here regardless of whether they have a suspended sentence or a prison sentence,” she said after a meeting with the top ranks of her party in the southwestern city of Mainz.
Under current laws, asylum seekers are only deported if they have been sentenced to jail terms of at least three years and if their lives are not at risk in their countries of origin.
As questions grew over the country’s ability to integrate the newcomers, it emerged late on Saturday that a man who was killed trying to attack a police station in Paris on Thursday had lived in an asylum seeker shelter in Germany.
Revealing that they had raided the man’s apartment, German police did not specify whether he was an asylum seeker, but a source close to the matter told reporters that the man was indeed registered as one.
In Tunisia, a woman who claimed to be the man’s mother confirmed that he had been living in Germany, but denied he had any links to extremist groups.
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