Terrorist: Walid Salihi, who was shot dead attacking a police station in Paris, had been arrested for sexual assault in Cologne, Germany

The Syrian man shot dead by French police last week may have taken part in the sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

ISIS supporter Walid Salihi, believed to be in his late teens or early 20s, was arrested in 2014 in Cologne for sexually abusing women in a night club.

Salihi is said to have ‘rubbed the behinds of females’ and touched their ‘intimate parts,’ according to a German police report.

A friend of Salihi was arrested after the Cologne mass attacks, where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted, leading to suspicion that he may have been part of the mob on New Years Eve before travelling to France, Bild newspaper reports.

Salihi was shot dead when he tried to enter the police station in Barbes, northern Paris, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and threatening officers with a knife on the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

He was later found to have carried a fake bomb vest and a piece of paper where he pledged allegiance to ISIS.

German authorities have confirmed the Salihi lived in a centre for asylum seekers in Recklinghausen, some 60 miles north of Cologne, where police found he used seven aliases.

‘We don’t know who the man really is,‘ said Uwe Jacob, director of the local state criminal office probing his background and movements in Europe.

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Officially he is registered as Walid Salihi, 18, who was seeking asylum seeker in Germany. In France he said he was 20, Moroccan and called Tarek Belgacem. He also pretended in turn to be a Georgian and a Tunisian.

Police initially identified him as Sallah Ali, born in 1995 in Casablanca, Morocco, a homeless man who was arrested for theft in the Var region of southern France in 2013.

He had been apprehended by police three times during his short time in Germany. He sat in police cells for drug possession, causing bodily harm, threats, thefts and unlawful weapons possession.

A former friend of Salihi was arrested after the Cologne mass attacks on New Years Eve, where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted, leading to suspicion that he may have been part of the mob

A former friend of Salihi was arrested after the Cologne mass attacks on New Years Eve, where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted, leading to suspicion that he may have been part of the mob