Hundred of North Africans detained over New Year in Germany city

Police in  Cologne detained hundreds of men "of North African appearance" in a New Year’s Eve operation to prevent a repeat of the mass sex attacks in the German city a year ago.
Security forces were taking no chances after they were criticised last year for failing to stop hundreds of robberies and sexual assaults around the city’s main station that were blamed mostly on men of North African and Arab origin.

The local police force tweeted in German, English, French, and Arabic at around midnight on New Year’s Eve that they had screened “hundreds of Nafris”, a colloquial German term for North Africans, at the train station.

Around 300 men of north African appearance were also taken off a train in another central station and had their identity papers checked.
Juergen Mathis, Cologne police chief, rejected accusations that his officers had conducted "racial profiling", arguing that many of the men detained had acted in an "aggressive" manner.
"I reject such criticism," he told a press conference. "The clear aim was to prevent similar events to those of last year."
Around 100 people were arrested overnight, police said, while authorities logged about 160 crimes that included a dozen assaults or insults of a sexual nature.
That was minor compared to last year’s mass outbreak of lawlessness in Cologne, which fuelled criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow over a million asylum seekers into Germany in 2015 and 2016.

Fireworks, a key element in New Year’s Eve celebrations in Germany, were banned this year in the area around Cologne’s main station, which is on the same square as the city’s landmark cathedral.
Police placed large concrete blocks in key points around the city where people gathered for celebrations to prevent an attack like the one in Berlin in December in which a truck ploughed through a Christmas market and 12 people died.
Berlin also had a relatively quiet New Year’s Eve, with thousands of revellers ringing in 2017 at the central Brandenburg Gate monument, shielded by concrete barriers and guarded by police officers with automatic rifles.