re: #142 lawhawk

From what I’m gathering regarding the incidents in Köln (and a few smaller-scale ones elsewhere in Germany), the shit’s getting ready to hit the fan. There’s already talk of German vigilante groups forming up in Düsseldorf to “protect” people.

The mood is getting ugly, made worse by accusations of a cover-up on the part of the police.

City authorities identified some suspects in the Cologne New Year’s Eve attacks as asylum seekers from Syria, detaining or questioning some of them, according to reports by local newspaper “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” and national daily “Die Welt,” which published an online preview of investigations by its “Welt am Sonntag” Sunday paper.

According to the newspapers’ reports, citing officers on duty on New Year’s Eve, officials checked the IDs of at least 100 people present at Cologne’s central station on December 31 after their behavior became conspicuous. Seventy-one people were identified, 11 people were remanded into custody and 32 criminal complaints were registered, according to the Welt am Sonntag (WamS) report.

“There were, quite to the contrary of what was said publicly, identity checks on numerous people,” the WamS quoted an unnamed officer as saying. “Most of them were recently-arrived asylum seekers.”

The first internal police report on the event - a so-called “Wichtige Ereignis Meldung” (“important event announcement”) - spoke of a crowd mainly of “North African and Arab” origin. According to the Kölner Stadt-anzeiger, the officer leading the team at the station wanted the report to include mention of the Syrians and asylum seekers, but the senior officer writing the “WE-Meldung” decided not to, saying it would be “politically awkward.”

dw.com