Sex attackers risk deportation says Merkel per BBC News who continue to try to persuade that migrants might not have been to blame for the New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne, Stuttgart, Switzerland and elsewhere

This BBC news article is desperate stuff. It tries to persuade us that it might not be migrants from the Middle East and North Africa that were to blame for the sexual assaults and other misdemeanours that occurred on New Year's Eve in Cologne and other cities in Europe. 

'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.'

'But Cologne's mayor said there was no reason to believe those behind the attacks were refugees.'

The mayor and the BBC might actually be correct here, but only insofar as these migrants ceased to be refugees when they left the first safe country they reached having previously left their dangerous country of origin. Once they left Turkey, Greece, Italy etc and moved north for the money, benefits and housing they stopped being refugees and became migrants. 

The above assumes that these people ever were refugees, something that is by no means certain and is indeed unlikely to apply to all of them.