The Finnish police reported sexual assaults by asylum seekers on New Year’s Eve. Unlike in Cologne the Finns apparently managed to stifle any excess in the bud.
Much like in Cologne, the Finnish police in the capital Helsinki has reported numerous “widespread sexual assaults” on women on New Year’s Eve. “Such kind of harassment has never existed before New Year’s Eve or on other occasions,” told Helsinki’s Deputy Police Chief Ilkka Koskimaki on Thursday the news agency AFP. It involves “an entirely new phenomenon”.
From the police commissioned security forces had reported “widespread sexual assaults” on a central square, where about 20,000 people celebrated the beginning of the new year, police said. At the main railway station, where about a thousand asylum seekers, mainly from Iraq had gathered, had been three assaults. As a result three asylum seekers were arrested right there, Koskimaki stated.
The police further reported that they had before New Year’s Eve “gotten information of the fact that asylum seekers may have had similar plans as the men that gathered at Cologne’s main train station.” Therefore, the security precautions had been raised in advance “to an exceptional level.” A connection between the events in Helsinki and Cologne did Koskimaki not see, he said.
Due to the incidents on New Year’s Eve in Cologne there are now 121 criminal charges. According to Cologne police 16 possible suspects have been identified. The young men come thus “mainly” out of the North African region. In Hamburg were, according to the police so far 70 criminal charges of sexual harassment on New Year’s Eve. In the meantime sexual assaults were also reported from Switzerland and Austria.