The apparent policy U-turn comes following reports of mass sexual assault and a number of rapes allegedly undertaken by men from among a group of more than a thousand in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
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The city’s chief of police Wolfgang Albers was relieved of his duties amid mounting criticism of the handling of the incidents.
Asylum seekers are now sent back only if they have been handed a sentence of at least three years and the situation in their countries is not putting their own lives at risk.
Members of far-right group PEGIDA were among those who took to the streets of the German city to march against the attacks and also express outrage at an alleged cover-up by police and media organisations over the involvement of migrants.
Tobias Plate, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said that the suspects were detained for theft and assault, but were not suspected of committing the sexual attacks.
Cologne police say they are now investigating 21 people in connection with the sexual assaults.
The suspects include nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, four Syrians, five Iranians, two Germans and one each from the US.
Standing next to Julia Kloeckner, the party’s candidate seeking the re-election of a CDU-led government in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Merkel said leaders meeting at the retreat on the Rhine river stood by her position from last month’s party congress on refugees, including the rejection of a limit on migrants.
The police chief Wolfgang Albers was informed by the state interior minister Ralf Jaeger that he would be given early retirement, the source said.
Some 1.1 million people registered as asylum seekers in Germany in 2015.
One Muslim woman from Bosnia, who did not want to be identified, told the AFP news agency that she had stopped wearing a headscarf and did not go out after dark because of her concerns about a recent increase in anti-Muslim attacks. It’s not known how a lot of all these are asylum seekers. They reportedly groped the women and stole from them.
Police officers outside the main train station in Cologne where numerous attacks occurred.
They said investigators working with video footage have identified 16 young men – largely of North African origin – who may be suspects and are working to determine whether they committed any crimes. After police moved in to break up the revelry, smaller groups of men began surrounding women passing through the area, groping and harassing them and stealing their belongings.
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“Serial offenders who consistently, for example, return to theft or time and again insult women must count on the force of the law”, Merkel said.
