Cologne severe struggle against the "NAFRI" -Kriminellen
The Cologne police struggling not only since the New Year's assaults with North African offenders. Investigators report the frustrating everyday.
Kriminalität: Kölns schwerer Kampf gegen die "Nafri"-Kriminellen
From Anant Agarwala, Cologne
January 15, 2016
In Intranet Cologne police finds a page named "AP NAFRI". The Analysis Project North African offenders. "The clientele behaves very aggressively," the police are there warned "during arrests by police officers are regularly reckless behaviors such as uncontrolled hitting, kicking, biting." It will not stay there "also weapons and dangerous objects are used (knife, cut partially on both sides, large pepper spray bottles, brass knuckles, large glass splinters, etc.)."
1947 North African suspects identified the Cologne police in 2015. "This environment is very large and continues to grow," said police detective Thomas Schulte, the determined in the scene. If it were not just about Trickdiebe or called Antänzer - but also to unscrupulous violent offenders.
Now this group comes into view a wider audience. Because the police suspect that at least some of the perpetrators of the Cologne Silvesternacht come from this environment. Large groups of young men between the cathedral and the main railway station attacked women, attacked them between his legs, the breasts and the buttocks. Recently the number of ads in over 650 lay
Especially young Moroccans and Algerians are among the suspects. A group of immigrants, of which have rarely been mentioned. They are known to the police for a long time. Since 2013, a team of specialists from around the Maghreb milieu cares at the Cologne police in "AP NAFRI".
"These are young men who have neither money nor social connection, and often no papers," says Martin Zillinger of the University of Cologne. The anthropologist doing research in Morocco and Moroccan migrants in Europe. Many come to Germany, even though they knew that they probably can not stay here. But they also knew: Until they are to be deported, pass two years rather three. A lot of time, in which they can not make money as an asylum seeker without a work permit - at least legally. But at home in Morocco sits the family and looks forward to the next check by Western Union.
"On their way through Europe they try somewhere build a life. But they move from failure to failure. Looking for ways to make money, they will eventually criminal," says Martin Zillinger, "Then they make their money on road ". For example, the Cologne Ring, where at night drunks are easy prey, in the Old Town between creeping tourist groups. Or in shopping malls, where wallets are unsheathed, carelessly disappear phones in his pockets.
A bit like the "Tatort"
In German police authorities these existences disappear behind abbreviations. NAFRI, MAR-m-23rd North African offenders, Moroccans, male, 23 years old. They specialize in theft and robbery, drinking much or take drugs. Since the late noughties are well known in Cologne as a criminal group, told a former senior policeman Cologne. "These are professional criminals," he says, "who live it."
In Kriminalkommissariat 43 within shouting distance of Cologne's main railway station to go each with several teams together against these perpetrators to: background investigators, fire-fighting units on the road, and sometimes the Federal Police is responsible for security in railway stations and airports.
It then runs a bit like the "crime scene": plainclothes policemen sitting in cars, for access ready. A colleague who observed the scene from an elevated point with binoculars. And the officials gives an indication of the car, you - as it says in the police jargon - the perpetrators awards: "three suspects in dark jackets come out of the house next to the pub ahead, circling a drunkard."
Perpetrators usually three of us traveling
The police move in use between fine lines. Here the Police Act NRW, paragraph 1 - the order to prevent crimes. Since the determination of success - offense allow access seconds later, ensure stolen, handcuffed. You must properly assess: Whip out the perpetrators equal a knife or beating them down the victim? Then they engage. Otherwise they wait usually.
The investigations are difficult and often unsatisfactory, telling police. This is painstaking work, in itself successes often have a bitter aftertaste. After taking the officials laid a perpetrator in flagrante delicto, extends the offense often not for a prison sentence. So you grin at the next application to the offenders that they have arrested the previous week. In Intranet Cologne police states: "The members of the audience always succeeds, through the often untrue assertion to be" foreign youths without identity papers to build a 'protective wall' '.
When the young men "work" go, they are usually in threes, explain officials. One ensures a second distracts the victim, puts an arm around his shoulders and asks him a leg, Mom pulls the phone out of his pocket. Forbid the victim, it conceded strokes or feel a sword on the neck.
Sexual assault of a large group of these perpetrators were not known so far. But that vorgingen individual North African gangs after this pattern, standing in a so-called monitoring and observation report of a civil strife from 11.11.2014, reported a police officer. It describes how the young offender deliberately surround women and grope before they disappear into the carnivalesque crowd.
Hardly chances of asylum
An investigation of the Cologne Kriminalkommissariat 41 showed: Of the more than 800 North Africans, who were between October 2014 and November 2015 registered as refugees at the Cologne police because they were staying in their territory, committing 40 percent of crimes, especially robbery and theft. In Syria, the rate on the other hand was less than one percent, with Iraqis at 2 percent. However, these results are not representative.
It is not the origin itself is crucial. But for what it is worth in the office. Less than 4 percent of asylum applications by Moroccans are granted, nearly two percent of the Algerians. Therefore, many can not even register, but keep away from the outset in the country illegally. Integration does not belong mostly not even to their plan. Their motto is: live a good life as possible, do not let too often caught, and if luck has run out, it goes somewhere else. "Do you have problems to classify itself, many years living partly as vagabonds. Even in the large, well-integrated North African community they get problems and therefore have no place," says the anthropologist Martin Zillinger. "Instead, they end up in criminal structures". Catches not on a network, you get caught up in the other.
Spontaneous appointments to raids
The police investigation of the AP NAFRI of recent years have been discovered yet no network in the sense of a mafia organization. "However, we do not rule out that there is such a structure," says the detective Thomas Schulte. The events of New Year has now made this question even more urgent. To date, the findings of AP NAFRI only indicates that it is loosely affiliated groups, which are spread all over North Rhine-Westphalia and communicate via the internet. "What we know is that they meet, for example, in their refugee camps and spontaneous arrange to raids," says Thomas Schulte. They are not confined to one place. Regularly take Policemen suspects that come down from Mettmann, Gelsenkirchen or Wuppertal to Cologne and understand stolen cell phones than their commuting allowance.
This makes the investigation difficult. There is no specific place, to which the police could concentrate now. "Most of the 135 officials from the investigation team New Year squatting in front of the computer and get square eyes," says an experienced policeman from the former leadership of the Cologne police. Pixelated videos have spotted, social networks scoured, mobile phones can be located. Other investigators question witnesses, compare statements, put photos of suspects before. Determine on the street, with house searches and handcuff applying - this is according to diffuse events New Year's Eve the absolute exception.
If police and prosecutors can convict suspects and they are sentenced to imprisonment of at least one year, many of them could be deported. At least in theory. For now live loud Interior Ministry 8,000 obliged to leave North Africans - not just from the Maghreb - in Germany, many of them undocumented. The necessary replacement documents for deportation set out, however, neither Morocco nor Algeria.