52 suspected offences across 12 categories, including 13 counts of dangerous assault and 11 narcotics violations. That is the file Germany assembled on a 22-year-old Syrian national in North Rhine-Westphalia before he attacked rail passengers in Cologne in June. He has never been deported.

Federal police said the attacks on June 21 began at 3:10 p.m. at the Cologne-Trimbornstrasse stop, where the man grabbed a traveller and tried to pull him toward the tracks. Both fell. Bystanders separated them. The suspect boarded an S19 train toward Cologne Central Station. Near the Cologne Messe/Deutz stop he punched two passengers in the face. At the main station, in a fast-food restaurant, he punched and kicked a 47-year-old man and continued striking him on the ground after federal officers arrived. Police said he was under the influence of narcotics when detained.

The breadth of his prior record emerged through a parliamentary request by Markus Wagner of the Alternative for Germany party. The North Rhine-Westphalia Justice Ministry published its answer on September 25. The list spans five thefts, one robbery, one case of receiving stolen goods, one insult, three threats, 11 assaults, 13 dangerous assaults, 11 narcotics violations, one rape allegation, two property-damage cases, two fraud cases and one count of resisting officers. None produced a conviction.

The ministry said police records "rest on suspicion" and "do not allow a conclusion on the correctness of the allegation." The man sits in a psychiatric hospital under Section 126a of the Code of Criminal Procedure, a provision applied when investigators believe a suspect may have acted without full criminal responsibility. His Federal Central Register entry, the ministry added, "shows solely sanctions under youth criminal law that are not entered in the certificate of good conduct," meaning the record would not appear on the background checks employers routinely request.

His case sits inside a broader enforcement failure. After Chancellor Friedrich Merz launched a Syrian removal programme following talks with the government that overthrew Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, Germany deported four Syrians in the first two months. Since January 21, Welt am Sonntag reported, not one further removal has taken place. More than 11,000 Syrians are legally required to leave the country.

The central obstacle is paperwork. Bavaria's Interior Ministry told Welt am Sonntag that the federal government took responsibility in the programme's first phase for obtaining replacement travel documents from Syria. Since the end of January, no additional documents have reportedly been issued. The Federal Police would not say whether the process runs through the Syrian embassy in Berlin or through other channels.

Merz said in a December 2024 ARD appearance that the "two-thirds" of Syrians in Germany who do not work are "overwhelmingly young men" and that "many must go back." The Interior Ministry disclosed in December that Syrian suspects had been linked to 135,668 crimes against German victims between 2015 and 2024, a rate of one offence every 39 minutes across ten years.

Four deportations in six months is not a removal policy. It is a press release.