Zurich police investigate New Year sexual assaults, no link to German cases

(I have it on good authority that these attacks also took place in the Swiss border cities of Basel and Geneva)

From Trust.Org

ZURICH, Jan 7 (Reuters) – About six women in Zurich have reported being sexually molested and robbed during New Year’s Eve celebrations after being surrounded by groups of men, police said in a statement on Thursday.

Zurich police said the attacks resembled incidents in Germany on the same evening but that they did not know of any concrete links between the cases.

About 90 women reported being robbed, threatened or sexually molested at New Year celebrations outside Cologne’s cathedral by young, mostly drunk men, police there said.

Additional incidents, but on a lesser scale, have been reported in Hamburg.

Zurich police said initially there were about 24 separate reports of theft at celebrations along the city’s lakefront. Follow-up investigations showed several cases involved women being fondled on top of their clothing, they said.

 

(Click to continue at source)

H/T M

This would be four countries now. Germany, Finland, (unsuccessful) Austria and Switzerland. This has to have been organized at a level where if governments did not know about it, they need to be dissolved and replaced with one that looks after the interests of the indigenous peoples of these nations. And if they did, the explanation for why it wasn’t stopped had better be stellar.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

18 Replies to “Zurich police investigate New Year sexual assaults, no link to German cases”

  1. While web surfing yesterday, I came across a news story that said, about mid December, something is coming, something is in preparation, hitting many areas. Sorry did not keep the link.

  2. 1000+ Iraqi men at Helsinki train station on NYE

    Lügenpresse is still downplaying this.

    The detective chief inspector of the National Board of Investigation says a preliminary probe has revealed no links between a case in Germany involving a large group of about one-thousand men robbing and molesting women, and another incident that took place in Finland at the New Year.
    On Thursday Helsinki police said they saw similarities between the incident in Cologne, Germany involving a large group of men robbing and molesting women, and one that took place in Helsinki on New Year’s Eve.

    But the NBI’s detective chief inspector Thomas Elfgren said that there was no reason to believe the incidents were connected.

    “There is nothing that indicates that there was a planned a wave of harassment like the one which occurred in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve,” Elfgren said, apparently playing down the issue.

    Elfgren was responding to statements by Helsinki police and Interior Minister Petteri Orpo which voiced suspicion that the incidents on New Year’s Eve in the two cities were somehow connected or similar in nature.

    Elfgren is leading the preliminary investigation of the arrest of six Iraqi citizen asylum seekers at a refugee reception centre in Kirkkonummi on December 31, 2015. The men were released right after the New Year.
    Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d3d_1452184247#C24IczhLLF8alBUZ.99

    • F I N L A N D – Unprecedented sex harassment in Helsinki at New Year

      Finnish police reported Thursday an unusually high level of sexual harassment in Helsinki on New Year’s Eve and said they had been tipped off about plans by groups of asylum seekers to sexually harass women.

      Helsinki deputy police chief Ilkka Koskimaki told AFP: “There hasn’t been this kind of harassment on previous New Year’s Eves or other occasions for that matter… This is a completely new phenomenon in Helsinki.”

      Security guards hired to patrol the city on New Year’s Eve told police there had been “widespread sexual harassment” at a central square where around 20,000 people had gathered for celebrations.

      Three sexual assaults allegedly took place at Helsinki’s central railway station on New Year’s Eve, where around 1,000 mostly Iraqi asylum seekers had converged.

      “Police have… received information about three cases of sexual assault, of which two have been filed as complaints,” Helsinki police said in a statement.

      “The suspects were asylum seekers. The three were caught and taken into custody on the spot,” Helsinki deputy police chief Ilkka Koskimaki told AFP.

      Police said they had increased their preparedness “to an exceptional level” in Helsinki for New Year’s Eve after being tipped off about possible problems.

      “Ahead of New Year’s Eve, the police caught wind of information that asylum seekers in the capital region possibly had similar plans to what the men gathered in Cologne’s railway station have been reported to have had,” police said in a statement.

      Dozens of apparently coordinated sexual assaults against women took place on New Year’s Eve in the western German city of Cologne.

      Cologne police said they had received 120 criminal complaints by Thursday and quoted witnesses as saying that groups of 20-30 young men “who appeared to be of Arab origin” had surrounded victims, assaulted them and in several cases robbed them.

      Koskimaki said police did not see a link between the Cologne and Helsinki incidents.

      Shortly before New Year’s Eve, Finnish police also arrested six Iraqis at an asylum residency centre in Kirkkonummi, around 30 kilometres (19 miles) west of Helsinki, suspected of “publicly inciting criminal behaviour”. They were released on January 2.

      According to Koskimaki, the arrests were linked to the information police received in the run-up to New Year’s Eve.

      In November, Finnish authorities said around 10 asylum seekers were suspected of rapes, among the more than 1,000 rapes reported to police in 2015.

      http://www.globalpost.com/article/6716353/2016/01/07/unprecedented-sex-harassment-helsinki-new-year

  3. ‘Angela Merkel invited us’: How baying asylum seeker sex mob taunted Cologne police after robbing and raping women

    Shock new details of ‘drunk and stoned’ New Year sex mob in police report

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3388490/Angela-Merkel-invited-baying-asylum-seeker-sex-mob-taunted-Cologne-police-robbing-raping-women.html

    Huge influx of migrant men will lead to more sex attacks like those in Cologne, says analyst, as it’s revealed Austrian police have ALSO covered up identical gang assaults

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3388422/Huge-influx-migrant-men-lead-sex-attacks-like-Cologne-says-analyst-police-reveal-gangs-blocked-reaching-women-screamed-help.html

    Shall I just buy a burka and get it over with?

    Europe’s governments may be desperate to cover it up but Cologne proves that many Muslim men have NO respect for white women – or the cultures of the countries they are invading

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3388711/KATIE-HOPKINS-Europe-s-governments-desperate-cover-Cologne-proves-Muslim-men-NO-respect-white-women.html

  4. New Year sexual assaults in Frankfurt, police say (thelocal, Jan 6, 2016)
    http://www.thelocal.de/20160106/cologne-police-cant-work-this-way-minister

    “Groups of men sexually assaulted women in Frankfurt on New Year, police report – as the number of complaints of sexual assault in Hamburg has risen to nearly forty.

    In scenes similar to those in Cologne, several women have reported New Year sexual assaults to police in Frankfurt.

    In one case that took place shortly after midnight a group of around ten men encircled three women and touched them in a massively inappropriate manner, Spiegel reports.

    The women reported the cases on Tuesday afternoon.

    The men were of north African appearance who spoke in broken English with strong Arabic accents, police said.

    “We didn’t know of the phenomenon where groups of men severely sexual molest women until now,” said a police spokesperson.

    In another incident four women were assaulted by a group of three men who groped them. One of the women had her mobile phone stolen. As yet no description of the men has been published.

    In Hamburg the number of women who have reported being sexually assaulted on New Year has risen to 39, police report.

    Twenty six new cases of theft or sexual assault have been reported in the port city over the past 24 hours.

    Details of sexual assaults in Hamburg have been slow to emerge. It seems, though, that the attacks took place in several spots, but were mainly focused on the Reeperbahn, the city’s best known night spot…”

  5. Salzburg women report NYE sexual assaults (thelocal, Jan 7, 2016)
    http://www.thelocal.at/20160107/salzburg-women-also-report-nye-sexual-assaults

    “Several women in the Austrian city of Salzburg have said they were sexually assaulted on New Year’s Eve – this comes after German police were accused of a cover-up after dozens of women in Cologne were assaulted on the same evening.

    Austrian police have confirmed that they are investigating a number of complaints and that so far three men have been arrested in connection with the reported assaults.

    A 23-year-old man is alleged to have molested a young German woman in central Salzburg, and then went on to set off fireworks in the direction of a 17-year-old, who was slightly injured in the abdomen. Police said in a statement that the man was of Syrian nationality.

    Earlier this week several other women came forward to tell Salzburg police that they had been sexually assaulted on New Year’s Eve. A 22-year-old said that she was harassed by a group of men on Residenzplatz in the heart of the city, who groped her and then stole her mobile phone. She told police that the group consisted of around eight to ten men who all seemed to be foreigners.

    A 58-year-old woman told police that she was also sexually assaulted on Residenzplatz, by a 28-year-old man. She immediately went to the police and the man has since been arrested. According to the police report he is originally from Afghanistan.

    Police are also investigating another complaint from a 28-year-old woman who said she was sexually assaulted by a 24-year-old man outside a popular Salzburg nightclub on December 30th. The club’s bouncers were able to tackle the man and hold on to him until police arrived and arrested him. Again, the police report says the man is of Afghan nationality.

    “State police are currently investigating whether these were organized attacks and if there are any connections between individual perpetrators or groups of perpetrators,” police spokeswoman Valerie Hillebrand said on Thursday.

    She added that the fact that news of the attacks has only just emerged was not because police had tried to conceal them, but that the victims had only been encouraged to report what had happened to them after reading about similar attacks in Germany…”

  6. Woman flees attempted gang rape on Paris train (thelocal, Jan 7, 2016)
    http://www.thelocal.fr/20160107/two-jailed-after-attempted-gang-rape-on-paris-train

    “A woman has made a lucky escape after a group of men sexually assaulted and attempted to rape her on a Paris train, reports say.

    The 28-year-old woman was initially travelling in an empty carriage on an RER train in Paris on the night of December 9th when around ten men had got on the train at Montparnasse station.

    The woman started to feel uncomfortable and decided to sit elsewhere, reported Le Parisien newspaper.

    Three of the men, reported to be Afghan refugees, followed her and soon began to assault her. One of them strangled her with her scarf and another held a knife to her face while the three men began to undress her, reported the paper.

    By chance at the next station another passenger boarded the train and intervened to protect the victim. He managed to scare off the attackers.

    The woman rushed to a nearby restaurant where she took refuge. She was left severely traumatized a source close to the case told Le Parisien.

    Police were able to catch two of the alleged perpetrators thanks to the help of CCTV footage at the Montparnasse station. They were both Afghani refugees, aged 19 and 45 years old, men who the victim was able to identify, Le Parisien reported.

    The incident has emerged as the issue of sex attacks by immigrants and refugees continues to cause a storm in Germany after reports of mass assaults on New Year’s Eve in Cologne. ..”

  7. Woman flees attempted gang rape on Paris train

    …Three of the men, reported to be Afghan refugees, followed her and soon began to assault her. One of them strangled her with her scarf and another held a knife to her face while the three men began to undress her, reported the paper…

    http://www.thelocal.fr/20160107/two-jailed-after-attempted-gang-rape-on-paris-train

    Zurich women assaults ‘similar’ to Cologne’s

    http://www.thelocal.ch/20160107/zurich-assaults-on-women-compared-to-cologne

    Salzburg women report NYE sexual assaults

    http://www.thelocal.at/20160107/salzburg-women-also-report-nye-sexual-assaults

  8. Cologne sex attacks: Police could not cope – report (BBC, Jan 7, 2016)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35256576

    “An internal police report reveals officers “could not cope” with the volume of attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, German media say.

    Women were “forced to run the gauntlet” through gangs of drunken and aggressive men outside the station, it said.

    Police say the number of reported crimes from the incident has risen to 121, about three-quarters of which involve sexual assault.

    They have identified 16 suspects, but have made no new arrests.

    In the report by Germany’s national police, seen by Spiegel and Bild newspapers, an unidentified senior officer describes the scene in Cologne on New Year’s Eve as “chaotic and shameful”.

    It recounts how police were met by “anxious citizens with crying and shocked children” when they arrived at the city’s main railway station.

    “On the square outside were several thousand men, most of a migrant background, who were firing all kinds of fireworks and throwing bottles into the crowd at random.”

    German media, also quoting internal police reports, say that significant numbers of Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi migrants were in the crowd – although it is unclear if any were involved in the attacks.

    Officers managed to clear the square, but the chaos continued with shocked and crying women reporting large numbers of sexual assaults.

    “The task forces could not cope with all the events, assaults, and crimes – there were just too many happening at the same time,” the senior officer concluded in the national police report…”

  9. German Muslims Condemn Cologne Attacks, Fear Consequences (abcnews, Jan 7, 2016)
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/germany-minister-deportations-cologne-case-36137126

    “Members of Cologne’s large Muslim community have joined the chorus condemning a string of assaults on women on New Year’s Eve that have shocked Germany. But some are also voicing concern that pointing the finger of blame at Muslims in general — and North African immigrants in particular — is unfair when most migrants are law-abiding and the full facts of what happened on the night remain unclear.

    In Ehrenfeld, a multi-ethnic neighborhood where streets are lined with colorful Turkish grocery stores and halal butchers, few can believe that those who allegedly carried out the assaults amid the crowds ringing in the New Year may share their religion.

    Police said Wednesday that 121 women have filed criminal complaints for robbery and sexual assault — including two allegations of rape. They said the attackers were among a group of some 1,000 men described as being of “Arab or North African origin” who gathered in front of the Cologne’s main train station and gothic cathedral that night.

    Although there is little solid information so far on who committed the assaults, the incident has put a spotlight on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcoming stance toward those fleeing conflict, and has been seized on by Germany’s far right, which opposes most forms of immigration.

    “It’s really sad what happened,” said one woman wearing a Muslim headscarf, who only gave her last name, Ozap. She rejected the suggestion by some German politicians that the Muslim attitudes toward women might have played a role in the attacks.

    “Everywhere it says that this has something to do with Muslims. What I read and learned in the Quran is completely different.

    “I’ve been here for 30 years myself and I’ve never seen anything like this,” she added.

    Hassan Akdogdu, a 34-year-old businessman and a second-generation Turkish immigrant, agreed. He accused police of not doing enough to prevent the attacks.

    “It’s nothing to do with religion,” he said. “Lack of respect for women isn’t a religious problem, as a Muslim I can say that.”

    Akdogdu also questioned whether the issue might have triggered greater outrage because of an ongoing debate in Germany over how to integrate the nearly 1.1 million refugees who came to the country last year, many of them Muslims from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

    “Refugees are an important political issue at the moment but I don’t believe, I don’t want to believe, that it was really refugees,” said Akdogdu. “Harassment and suchlike isn’t just something you need to talk about with refugees, but with everyone.”

    The assaults have dominated headlines in recent days. German media — initially reluctant to report on the incident last week while many of the details were still hazy — have published grim details and sharp editorials calling for tough justice.

    Several media outlets on Thursday published an internal report by German police describing how women had to run through mobs of drunken men outside Cologne train station.

    The report compiled by an unidentified senior federal police officer recounts how “several thousand male persons with a migrant background” hurled fireworks and bottles into the crowds of revelers who had gathered in front of Cologne Cathedral to celebrate New Year.

    “Women had to literally ‘run the gauntlet’ of very drunk men,” the report said. “In the course of the operation numerous crying and shocked women/girls approached officers and told them of sexual assaults by male migrants/groups. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to identify them anymore.”

    Federal police spokesman Jens Floeren confirmed the authenticity of the report, but noted that it represented one officer’s “subjective assessment” of the incident three days after it happened.

    Merkel described the assaults as “repugnant criminal acts that … Germany will not accept,” and said changes to the law and increasing police presence may be examined.

    “The feeling women had in this case of being at people’s mercy, without any protection, is intolerable for me personally as well,” she said in Berlin. “And so it is important for everything that happened there to be put on the table.”

    Murat Ornek, the German-Turkish manager of a hair salon in Ehrenfeld, said he was worried both by the assaults and by the possible backlash against Muslims.

    “To be honest many people don’t talk about it, they live their lives as if nothing happened. But many people are afraid too, that things will escalate here too,” he said.

    Muslims elsewhere in Germany also voiced anguish over the attacks, especially on social media.

    Among members of a Facebook group for Syrian refugees in Germany, some called for the perpetrators to be strongly punished and deported immediately.

    Riham al-Kousaa, a Palestinian-Syrian journalist, warned that it would take much longer to erase prejudices than the time it took to create them.

    The attackers in Cologne, she wrote for the magazine Cicero, hadn’t understood “that they didn’t just harm the victims and themselves. They harmed thousands who left their homes because of precisely such crimes.”

    Police said investigators working with video footage have identified 16 young men — mostly of North African origin — who may be suspects and are working to determine whether they committed any crimes. Authorities have not released names for most of the men.

    While officials have cautioned against casting suspicion on refugees in general, Merkel said “we must examine again and again whether we have already done what is necessary in terms of … deportations from Germany in order to send clear signals to those who are not prepared to abide by our legal order.”

    In Muelheim, another Cologne neighborhood with a distinct immigrant presence, German-Tunisian lawyer Mehdi Labidi said there was no excusing the attacks — but questioned why police had identified the perpetrators as North African before making any arrests.

    Labidi said some of his refugee clients acknowledged being at the train station on New Year’s Eve, but denied committing assaults. “They told me there were other men there too, Italians, Albanians, Kurds, Iraqis and Turks. And the number of 1,000 is completely exaggerated.”

    “Germany is a tolerant country but I find this really strange that an entire ethnic group is being branded as criminals,” he added. “If far-right extremists attack North Africans then we are going to file a criminal complaint against police for incitement.””

      • When I watched the YouTube clip from Koln, I saw one guy with a Kurdish or Iranian flag.(the Kurdish differs from Iranian flag only by a drawing on white bar and I could not see the drawing only the colors) So there may have been a guy with Kurdish or Iranian flag. After all some small minority of Kurds are Muslim fundamentalists and some Iranians are fundamentalist and they may have been among migrants.

  10. Reports: Cologne NYE assaulters were largely asylum seekers (DW, Jan 7, 2016)
    http://www.dw.com/en/reports-cologne-nye-assaulters-were-largely-asylum-seekers/a-18966406

    “A majority of men who sexually harassed women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve were asylum seekers, German media reports. City police reportedly did not want to publicize this because of its “politically awkward” nature.

    City authorities identified at least some of the perpetrators at Cologne as asylum seekers from Syria, even 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.”

    It is still unclear whether the same persons were involved in the assaults.

    Offenders were after ‘sexual amusement’

    WamS also received information contradicting another official statement by the city police, which said the main intention of the men in Cologne was to steal from passengers and that assault was secondary. However, “what actually happened was the exact opposite,” a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

    “For the mostly Arabic offenders, sexual assault was the priority, or, to express it from their point of view, their sexual amusement was thepriority. A group of men would encircle a female victim, close the loop, and then start groping the woman,” WamS quoted the officer as saying.

    The deputy chief of the trade union for police employees (the GdP), Ernst Walter, suggested that the Cologne police’s mishandling of the case could cost city police chief Wolfgang Albers his job: “I’m asking myself this,” Walter said. “How could the police publish a message on January 1, saying that New Year’s celebrations had been peaceful?”

    “All these shocking incidents” had become known the same night, he said, adding that officers from the federal police were trying to help women and were worried that “people could have even died.”

    The media reports still largely contradict Cologne police’s official account of events, which say that 16 possible suspects have so far been identified, with that group “to the largest extent” hailing from North Africa.

    The state’s interior minister, Ralf Jäger, has already ordered a first full formal report on the incident, which is due for submission on Monday. When asked for a comment by the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger local paper, police referred the reporters to the impending formal report, saying they would neither confirm nor deny the report.

    Nearly 1,000 men are reported to have divided themselves into smaller groups and robbed and sexually harassed women at Cologne’s central station on New Year’s Eve. Similar incidents occurred on a far smaller scale in Hamburg and Stuttgart.”

  11. NO link! Absolute BS, the link is cultural and religious, anyone can see the common denominator is Islam. Most of the EU political class (except the Slavic and eastern ones) have their blinders on, they are forbidden to express otherwise on orders from the ‘Throne In Brussels’ the seat of the European Dictatorship. IMHO the western Europeans will continue to complain and again be lulled into complacency with false promises and the usual lip service. Not so for the Eastern mostly Slavic nations who have for centuries been invaded, suffered under Soviet Communism for decades, and have been sold out by their own and outside politicians, are not looking for a rerun of Ottoman domination. They will resist, it will get ugly,they will not take it lying down.

    • There were too many attacks in too many attacks in too many locations all at roughly the same time for it to have not been coordinated.

  12. You can add another country to your list. It happened in Kalmar, a small town in the south of Sweden too. Nine young women have reported being molested by groups of foreign men to the police so far, they are expecting more to come forward.

    I can’t find any articles about it in English, but you can use Google translate and read articles from the local newspapers:
    http://24kalmar.se/2016/01/01/gang-borjade-tafsa-pa-tva-flickor-bildade-ring-runt-dem/
    http://www.barometern.se/kalmar/man-tafsade-pa-minst-nio-tjejer-pa-nyarsafton/