German Officials Suspect 18 Asylum Seekers in New Year's Attacks

German officials say 18 asylum-seekers are among the suspects in thefts and sexual assaults on women in Cologne on New Year's Eve.
德国官员表示，新年前夕在科隆对妇女进行盗窃和性侵犯的嫌犯中，有18名是寻求庇护者。

Interior Ministry official Tobias Plate spoke to reporters Friday morning. He said police have identified 31 suspects. Eighteen had earlier requested asylum in Germany.
德国内政部官员托比亚斯·普拉特（Tobias Plate）周五上午对记者表示，警方已经确定了31名嫌犯的身份，其中18人此前申请在德国避难。

Plate said two of the 31 suspects are German. Nine are Algerian, eight are from Morocco, five are Iranian, and four are Syrians. The remaining three are from Iraq, Serbia and the United States.
普拉特表示，31名嫌犯中有两名德国人，9名阿尔及利亚人，8名摩洛哥人，5名伊朗人以及4名叙利亚人。剩下3人分别来自伊拉克、塞尔维亚和美国。

Police have documented 32 criminal acts. Plate said the large majority were tied to theft and physical injury. Three were tied to sexual assaults.
警方已经记录了32起犯罪行为。普拉特表示，其中大部分犯罪涉及的是盗窃和人身伤害，还有3起涉及性侵犯。

Also Friday, officials forced the police chief of Cologne to retire. He had faced growing criticism of the way his department dealt with the New Year's Eve attacks.
同样是在周五，有关官员迫使科隆警察局长辞职。科隆警察局对新年前夕袭击的处理方式让他面临了越来越多的批评。

About 1,000 men had gathered near Cologne's main train station around midnight, throwing fireworks. After police moved in to stop them, smaller groups of men began surrounding women in the area. They reportedly groped the women and stole from them.
大约1000名男子午夜时分聚集在科隆主要火车站附近并投掷焰火。在警察过来阻止他们之后，小群的男子开始围堵该地区的妇女。据报道他们猥亵女性并行窃。

A policewoman said she was among those attacked.
一名女警察自称受到了这种攻击。

About 90 people have filed criminal complaints, including one report of a rape.
大约90人提起了刑事诉讼，其中包括一起强奸案。

The assaults have intensified the debate over Germany's immigration policies. Some 1.1 million people registered as asylum seekers in Germany last year.
这些攻击事件加剧了对德国移民政策的争论。去年大约有110万人在德国登记为寻求庇护者。

Both Germany's chancellor and its justice minister have called for the perpetrators to be punished.
德国总理和司法部长都要求严惩肇事者。

On Thursday, the German justice minister said any asylum-seekers among the suspects could be deported if found guilty.
德国司法部长周四表示，如果被判有罪，嫌犯中任何寻求庇护者都可能被驱逐出境。