Cologne sex attack charge against Algerian man dismissed by judge

A judge in Cologne has dismissed charges of sexual assault against an Algerian man in connection with the New Year attacks.

Dr Frank Altpeter acquitted the unnamed 26-year-old as it "could not be proven" that he had taken part in the sexual assault.

The victim in the case heard at the court on Friday could not be sure that the two men in the dock were the ones who attacked her, German media reports.

The man and another Algerian, 23, were handed six-month suspended sentences over handling stolen goods - relating to the mobile phone of a victim which was found on them - and breaking into a car on a separate occasion.

A court spokesman said the men were currently in detention awaiting deportation from Germany.

It was the first case of sexual assault from New Year's Eve to come before the court.

Germany was shocked by the string of sexual assaults and robberies against over 1,000 women in the city.

The victims reported gangs of men of "Arab and North African appearance" surrounding them before groping, assaulting and robbing them.

The incident provoked an intense backlash against German Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy towards the Syrian refugees who were flooding over land borders and the Mediterrnean sea to escape the brutality of Isis and the Syrian civil war.

Far-right group Pegida staged a rally in Cologne calling for Germany to close its borders after an estimated 1.1m refugees arrived in the country in 2015.

A subsequent investigation found that of the 159 men arrested in connection with the allegations, although some were asylum seekers, only three people had recently arrived from war-torn regions of Syria and Iraq.

The head of the police inquiry, Detective Superintendent Thomas Schulter said of the men being investigated in connection with the attacks, two-thirds were of Algerian or Moroccan origin.

Police were accused of attempting to cover up the attacks after initially reporting that the New Year's Eve celebrations had passed without incident.

The local police chief, Wolfgang Albers, was suspended over his handling of the incident in January but allegations surfaced in April that the police had been ordered to remove the word "rape" from their report by the interior ministry of the state government.

Cologne newspaper Express published a letter supposedly from a policeman named Joachim H who was on duty that day and described his colleague getting an order to remove the word "vergewaltigung" - or "rape" - because it was the "wish of the state interior ministry".

Police ultimately refused the request but the allegations put more pressure on North Rhine-Westphalia interior minister, Ralf Jäger, over his handling of the crisis.

He denied a cover-up but confirmed there had been "professional discussions" over the "classification" of the New Year's Eve assaults.