MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On New Year's Eve, hundreds of women in Cologne were robbed and sexually assaulted by groups of aggressive men, believed to be mostly of Arab and North African origin.
According to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, a 26-year-old Algerian is the first among 21 suspects under corresponding investigation to be arrested for a sexual offense.
Last week, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the country's authorities would make it easier to deport migrants who had been convicted of committing crimes, noting that the new rules would make a foreigner's expulsion likely in cases where a criminal had been sentenced to one or more years in prison.
More than a million people – mostly from North Africa and the Middle East – claimed asylum in Germany in 2015.
