A German state minister allegedly tried to pressure police in Cologne to remove the word rape from reports about the mass sexual assaults committed by asylum seekers on New Year's Eve.

Cologne's Express newspaper claimed that the interior ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia pressured a senior police officer to delete 'rape' from an internal report issued on January 1.

'KHK told me that the state control centre wanted the report cancelled and the expression "rape" deleted,' read a document written by another police officer which was printed by the Express.

A German state minister allegedly tried to pressure police in Cologne to remove the word rape from reports about the mass sexual assaults committed by asylum seekers on New Year's Eve

According to the paper, officer KHK and his colleague were on duty when the events of the night before were being discussed for an interim report.

The night before hundreds of women had been sexually molested and robbed by marauding gangs of refugees, most of them from North Africa.

The initial report that the officers discussed read 'rape, sexual harassment, thefts, committed by a large group of foreign people'.

Officer KHK received a call hours later requesting he delete 'rape' at the behest of the state interior ministry. The officer refused.

NRW interior minister Ralf Jäger, who allegedly wanted the word rape removed from official reports, is facing calls to stand down. He is due to be quizzed by parliamentary colleagues on Thursday.

The night before the alleged discussion, hundreds of women had been sexually molested and robbed by marauding gangs in Cologne (pictured)

He denied the allegations through a spokesman who said; 'It's not true that the rape on New Year's Eve in Cologne was supposed to be hushed up.'

But his office did admit to 'professional discussions' about the 'criminal classification' of what went on - events which forever changed German perceptions about mass immigration.

Meanwhile police in Germany have arrested a Syrian man on war crimes charges. Ibrahim Al F., aged 41, was detained in North Rhine-Westphalia.

'The accused is strongly suspected of treating people entitled to protection under international humanitarian law cruelly and inhumanely in the autumn of 2012 during the Syrian civil war,' prosecutors said.

He was a member of an anti-Assad militia called Ghuraba al-Sham, operating in and around Aleppo. He is accused of plundering valuable art which he later sold for his own gain.

'Two residents who tried to protect their neighbouring district from plundering are believed to have been captured by the accused and his fighters and held for several days at a makeshift prison under their control,' prosecutors said.