Vigorously denied claims that recently arrived migrants were behind the Cologne mass sexual assaults have now been proven.

After the attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015, many witnesses and victims came forward to identify their attackers, with over 1,500 complaints in all received by police in the weeks following the night. Many described the men who had assaulted them as “North African or Arab origin”.

Conscious to defend Germany’s policy on mass migration and the highly-vaunted ‘culture of welcome’ the country was rolling out to all-comers, many vigorously denied the attacks, which ranged from rape, to sexual assault, and theft, had anything to do with the migrant crisis.

One of those who spoke out most vigorously was Cologne’s staunchly pro-immigration mayor Henriette Reker, who denied there was any link whatsoever between the attacks and migrants. Even in January, this was contradicted by Cologne’s police.

Yet today German regional newspaper the Rheinische Post reports the eyewitness accounts were “largely consistent with the recent results of the investigations”.

The new statistics and facts confirm not only that the majority of men committing the assaults were not of “German origin”, but that most of them had been in the country less than twelve months. Despite their recent arrival to Germany, a remarkable two-thirds had already received the attention of the police for criminal behaviour.

The revelation that shows 70 per cent of the suspects of the attacks had been in Germany for less than a year totally discredits the previous line that those responsible were actually long-time residents from North Africa.

At the same time as the data release this week a spokeswoman for the German interior minister insisted despite the New Year’s attacks: “Immigrants are not as criminal as Germans”. Yet in just a matter of hours this assertion was too debunked.

The Cologne Express, one of the first German language newspapers to report on the Cologne attacks before it was broadcast in English worldwide by Breitbart London, has shown the criminality of different nationalities varies wildly. While Iraqis, for instance, are significantly less likely to commit crimes in Germany, those economic migrants from North Africa have caused a “real shock for security experts”, according to the report.

Although North Africans from Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco make up just three per cent of immigrants, according to the statistic release, they are responsible for a quarter of crime.