Tunisian sought after police find ID in truck that killed 12 in Berlin
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GERMAN police are looking for a Tunisian man after finding an identity document under the driver’s seat of a truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market on Monday evening, killing 12 people, according to security sources.
The ID was in the name of Anis A., born in the southern city of Tataouine in 1992, the sources said, using a convention whereby suspects are identified by their first name and initial. The man was also believed to use false names.
He was in contact with Islamist militants in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and was known to German security agencies, the state’s Interior Minister said yesterday.
“Security agencies exchanged their findings and information about this person with the Joint Counter-Terrorism Center in November 2016,” Ralf Jaeger told a news conference.
He said the suspect had applied for asylum in Germany and his application was rejected in July. Attempts to deport him to Tunisia failed as he did not have identification papers, and the Tunisian authorities disputed whether he was their national.
He moved from NRW to Berlin in February and sought to make the German capital his new home, Jaeger said.
Daily newspaper Bild said the suspect was part of a large Islamist network.
The pre-Christmas carnage at a symbolic Berlin site — under the ruined spire of a church bombed in World War II — has shocked Germans and prompted security reviews across Europe, already on high alert after attacks this year in Belgium and France.
The possible involvement of a migrant or refugee has revived a bitter debate about security and immigration, with Chancellor Angela Merkel facing calls to clamp down after allowing more than a million newcomers into Germany over the past two years.
Merkel, who will run for a fourth term next year, has said it would be particularly repulsive if a refugee seeking protection in Germany was the perpetrator.
Police initially arrested a Pakistani asylum-seeker near the scene but released him without charge on Tuesday. Authorities have warned that the attacker is on the run and may be armed. It is not clear if the perpetrator was acting alone or with others.
The 25-ton truck, belonging to a Polish freight company, smashed into wooden huts selling Christmas gifts and serving mulled wine and sausages, also injuring about 45 people.
The Polish driver of the hijacked truck was found shot dead in the cabin of the vehicle. Bild said he was alive until the attack took place.
It quoted an investigator as saying there must have been a struggle with the attacker, who may have been injured.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility, as it did for a similar attack in July when a Tunisian-born man rammed a truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice. Eighty-six people were killed in that incident, and the driver was shot dead by police.
The head of the Association of German Criminal Detectives, Andre Schulz, told German television on Tuesday that police hoped to make another arrest soon.
“I am relatively confident that we will perhaps tomorrow or in the near future be able to present a new suspect,” he said.
Police had arrested another suspect in the early hours of yesterday but later released him, broadcaster rbb reported.
Yesterday’s edition of Passauer Neue Presse quoted the head of a group of interior ministers from Germany’s 16 federal states, Klaus Bouillon, as saying tougher security measures were needed.
“We want to raise the police presence and strengthen the protection of Christmas markets. We will have more patrols. Officers will have machine guns. We want to make access to markets more difficult, with vehicles parked across them,” Bouillon told the newspaper.
Some politicians have blamed Merkel’s open-door migrant policy for making such attacks more likely.
The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has gained support in the past two years as the chancellor’s popularity has waned, said on Tuesday that Germany is no longer safe.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told German radio there was a higher risk of Islamist attacks because of the influx of migrants in the past two years, many of whom have fled countries that included Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The task of tracking the suspects and the movements of the truck may be complicated by the relative scarcity of security cameras in public places in Germany.
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