Cologne prosecutor Ulrich Bremer said 73 suspects have been identified so far – most of them from North Africa. A total of 1,075 criminal complaints have been filed, including 467 alleging crimes of a sexual nature ranging from insults to rape.
“The overwhelming majority of persons fall into the general category of refugees,” Bremer told The Associated Press, saying recent reports describing only three of the suspects as refugees were “total nonsense.”
Initially, authorities in Cologne were accused of downplaying the fact that the attackers included many asylum-seekers because of the political sensitivity of the issue.
The suspects included 30 Moroccan nationals, 27 Algerians, four Iraqis, three Germans, three Syrians, three Tunisians, and one each from Libya, Iran and Montenegro, Bremer said.
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