Convict taken to beer hall escapes

A police car stands near the Cologne main train station in Cologne, western Germany on January 11, 2016. German authorities said that nearly all the suspects in a rash of New Year's Eve violence against women in Cologne were "of foreign origin", as foreigners came under attack amid surging tensions. During a press conference, Ralf Jaeger, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, released initial findings of a criminal probe over the crime spree and said that the attackers emerged from a group of more than 1,000 "Arab and North African" men who gathered between the main railway station and the city's iconic Gothic cathedral during the year-end festivities. / AFP / PATRIK STOLLARZ

Published Jan 21, 2016

Berlin - A convicted rapist is on the run in the western German city of Cologne after giving his guards the slip during a visit to a beer hall.

Police say 58-year-old Peter Breidenbach was on a day trip outside prison that included a stop at a brewery near Cologne cathedral Wednesday.

Breidenbach, a diabetic, disappeared after asking to go to the toilet.

Cologne police spokesman Andreas Frische said on Thursday that Breidenbach was an inmate at a prison in the nearby city of Aachen.

German news agency dpa reported that Breidenbach was sentenced to nine years in prison in 1991, but remanded in prison afterward because a court deemed him to be particularly dangerous.