53% of Sexual Crime Suspects on German Trains Were Foreign Nationals, H1 2026
October 23, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
German Federal Police recorded 98,026 crimes on trains and at stations in the first half of 2026. Foreign nationals, who make up 15% of Germany's population, accounted for 53% of sexual offence suspects.
53 percent of identified suspects in sexual offences on Germany's national rail network in the first half of 2026 were foreign nationals, according to Interior Ministry data released in response to a parliamentary inquiry by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group. Foreign nationals make up roughly 15 percent of Germany's population of about 83 million, according to federal statistics. Their share among sexual offence suspects is more than three times that figure.
The Interior Ministry data, as reported by the Berliner Zeitung, covers 98,026 crimes at stations and on trains between January and June 2026, including roughly 14,000 violent crimes, 1,104 sexual offences, about 24,000 property crimes and 796 weapons offences. Non-Germans accounted for 56.4 percent of suspects in property crimes and 45 percent in violent crimes. Among violent crime suspects, Syrians led with 581 identified, followed by Poles at 575, Ukrainians at 439 and Afghans at 351. In 44 track-push cases, 16 of the 25 suspects with known nationality were foreign nationals.
For sexual offences specifically, Syrians, Poles and Afghans ranked highest among non-German suspects. AfD lawmaker Martin Hess called the figures a 'security policy declaration of bankruptcy' and pointed to the repeated appearance of Syrian nationals at the top of both the violence and sexual offence tallies.
Deutsche Bahn told the taz newspaper that it responded after a 36-year-old ticket inspector was beaten to death by a ticketless passenger in Rhineland-Palatinate in February, introducing one-to-one security escorts for staff and starting a stab-proof vest trial in July.
The broader staffing data shows those measures landed against a deteriorating baseline. Figures the Interior Ministry gave to the Bundestag following a separate inquiry by Left Party lawmaker Dietmar Bartsch show that in the first five months of 2026 alone, 1,630 railway employees and 4,672 Federal Police officers became crime victims. Railway staff recorded 662 bodily harm cases, 175 dangerous bodily harm cases and 661 threats. Federal Police logged 3,734 acts of resistance and 1,427 physical attacks. Bartsch told Deutsche Presse-Agentur he calculated 5.5 physical attacks on railway staff per day in 2026, up from five per day across the first ten months of 2025, with roughly 30 Federal Police officers injured each day. He said Germany was heading for 'a new negative record of violence' on its railways.
CDU interior spokesman Alexander Throm called the statistics 'disturbing' and pointed to a new Federal Police law passing the Bundestag that same week, citing biometric recognition and artificial intelligence as tools for earlier threat detection at stations.
In the early hours of October 21, Munich police arrested a 22-year-old Ukrainian national with no fixed address in Germany after he sexually harassed a 21-year-old German woman on the N19 tram in the Laim district, according to Munich Police figures reported by bsaktuell.de. The woman tried to end the conversation. The man touched her repeatedly on the thigh over her clothing and ignored her repeated requests to stop. She retreated to the driver's cab; the driver called emergency number 110. Officers arrested the suspect on the tram. He was charged with sexual harassment and released after processing.
Published October 23, 2026 · Frisian News