Tag Archives: Berlin Christmas attack

Berlin Christmas market attacker got order directly from IS: report

FILE PHOTO: A general view shows the site where a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue in the west of Berlin, Germany, December 19, 2016 REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

BERLIN (Reuters) – The Tunisian who killed 12 people by driving a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin received his orders directly from Islamic State, a German magazine reported on Saturday.

The militant group claimed responsibility for the attack on Dec. 19, but it was unclear whether it had planned and executed it, or just inspired the attacker with its calls on supporters to hit targets in enemy countries.

Der Spiegel cited information provided to German security authorities from the United Arab Emirates on Jan. 8 that said Anis Amri, the failed asylum seeker who drove the truck into the crowd, had received an order from a squad within IS.

The squad is known to German authorities from other proceedings against suspected IS militants disguised as refugees, the magazine said.

Amri, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was shot dead by Italian police in Milan four days after the Berlin attack. Islamic State said the attack had been perpetrated by an IS “soldier … in response to calls to target nationals of the coalition countries”.

The federal public prosecutor’s office and the BKA federal police are looking into the information provided by the UAE, the magazine said, adding that German authorities considered the source to be reliable.

When asked for comment, the BKA said the federal public prosecutor’s office was responsible for providing information on the Amri case. The prosecutor’s office declined to comment.

On Wednesday, the prosecutor’s office said it had no evidence that other people based in Germany were involved in preparing or carrying out the attack and an evaluation of Amri’s mobile phone showed he had communicated with an IS member abroad before and during the attack.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; Additional reporting by Holger Hansen; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Germany deporting more ‘potential attackers’ after Berlin attack

Flowers and candles are pictured at the site where on December 19, 2016 a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square near Kurfuerstendamm avenue in Berlin, Germany, January 19, 2017. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

By Andrea Shalal

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany has deported 10 potential attackers since January as part of a tougher approach toward failed asylum seekers after one of them killed 12 people in an attack on a Berlin Christmas market, security sources said on Thursday.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere and other top officials have been pushing for quicker deportations of those denied asylum, while working with Morocco, Tunisia and other countries to speed up the repatriation process.

Tunisian Anis Amri, a supporter of Islamic State, attacked the Berlin market in December after being denied asylum. He was shot dead by Italian police days later.

Shortly after the incident, German’s Joint Terrorism Prevention Centre (GTAZ), reviewed the open cases of all other “potential attackers” like Amri, the sources said.

“A total of 10 potential attackers have since been successfully deported in a joint effort with the affected German states,” said one of the sources.

The suspected militants were sent back to mainly North African countries, the sources said, without providing details.

The change in approach was agreed by de Maiziere and Justice Minister Heiko Maas at a meeting on Jan. 10, where both men agreed that the Amri case must not be repeated.

In Amri’s case, one of the obstacles to physically deporting him was Tunisia’s failure to issue replacement identification papers, despite the availability of finger- and handprints.

This month German Chancellor Angela Merkel secured a promise from Tunisia to take back 1,500 rejected Tunisian asylum seekers, with those who agreed to leave voluntarily eligible to receive government aid. Germany also offered Tunisia 250 million euros in development aid.

Merkel, who will seek a fourth term as chancellor in September, has come under fire for allowing more than one million refugees to enter Germany over the past two years.

De Maiziere vowed on Tuesday to continue pushing for legislative changes that would make it easier to detain and deport potential attackers following the Amri case. One proposed law also calls for use of electronic tags.

The security sources said state prosecutors in the past had sought to exhaust opportunities to prosecute potential attackers in Germany for various other infractions, but this had proven difficult and time-consuming.

The sources did not provide details on the 10 individuals deported or say whether they were related to the Amri case. German authorities have arrested at least two individuals who had contact with Amri before the December attack.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Berlin market attack suspect killed in police shootout in Italy

The body of Anis Amri, the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack, is seen covered with a thermal blanket next to Italian officers in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan, Italy December 23, 2016.

By Emilio Parodi and Antonella Cinelli

MILAN (Reuters) – Italian police shot dead the man believed to be responsible for this week’s Berlin Christmas market truck attack, killing him after he pulled a gun on them during a routine check in the early hours of Friday.

The suspect – 24-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri – traveled to Italy from France, triggering a spate of criticism from euroskeptics over Europe’s open-border Schengen pact.

A police chief said his men had no idea they might be dealing with Amri when they approached him at around 3 a.m. (2200 EDT) outside a station in Sesto San Giovanni, a suburb of the northern city of Milan.

Amri is suspected of driving a truck that smashed through a Berlin market on Monday killing 12 people, and security forces across Europe have been trying to track him down.

The truck mowed through a crowd of people and bulldozed wooden huts selling Christmas gifts and snacks beside a famous church in west Berlin.

Militant group Islamic State acknowledged Amri’s death and his suspected role in the German attack – for which it has claimed responsibility – through its Amaq news agency.

“The executor of the Berlin attacks carries out another attack on Italian police in Milan and is killed in a shoot-out,” it said.

Milan police chief Antonio De Iesu told reporters that Amri had arrived in Milan’s main railway station from France at around 1 a.m. and had then traveled to Sesto San Giovanni, where two young policemen approached him because he looked suspicious.

“We had no intelligence that he could be in Milan,” De Iesu said. “They had no perception that it could be him otherwise they would have been much more cautious.”

He failed to produce any identification so the police requested he empty his pockets and his small backpack. He pulled a loaded gun from his bag and shot at one of the men, lightly wounding him in the shoulder.

Amri then hid behind a nearby car but the other police officer managed to shoot him once or twice, killing him on the spot. Amri was identified by his finger prints.

ITALIAN JAIL

De Iesu said that besides the gun, Amri had been carrying a small pocket knife. He also had a few hundred euros on him but no cell phone. Amri once spent four years in jail in Italy and police were trying to work out if he knew someone in Sesto.

A judicial source had earlier told Reuters that police had a tip off that Amri might be in the Milan area and that additional patrols had been sent out to look for him. De Iesu denied that, saying only that the authorities had recently ordered tighter security and more identification checks across the country.

“The two policemen simply decided to check up on a foreigner,” De Iesu said.

Leading euroskeptics were quick to blame the Schengen open pact for allowing the fugitive to travel easily.

“This escapade in at least two or three countries is symptomatic of the total security catastrophe that is the Schengen agreement,” said Marine Le Pen, who leads France’s far-right, anti-immigrant National Front party and is running for president.

“I reiterate my pledge to give back France full control of its sovereignty, its national borders and to put an end to the consequences of the Schengen agreement,” she said.

Amri had been caught on camera by German police on a regular stake-out at a mosque in Berlin’s Moabit district early on Tuesday, Germany’s rbb public broadcaster reported. His movements thereafter are not clear.

He had originally come to Europe in 2011, reaching the Italian island of Lampedusa by boat. He told authorities he was a minor, though documents now indicate he was not, and he was transferred to Catania, Sicily, where he was enrolled in school.

Just months later he was arrested by police after he attempted to set fire to the school, a senior police source said. He was later convicted of vandalism, threats, and theft.

He spent almost four years in Italian prisons before being ordered out of the country after Tunisia refused to accept him back because he did not have I.D. papers linking him to the north African country.

He moved to Germany and applied for asylum there, but this was rejected after he was identified by security agencies as a potential threat. Once again he could not be deported because of a lack of identification documentation.

A woman lays flowers near the Christmas market at Breitscheid square in Berlin, Germany, December 23, 2016, following an attack by a truck which ploughed through a crowd at the market on Monday night.

A woman lays flowers near the Christmas market at Breitscheid square in Berlin, Germany, December 23, 2016, following an attack by a truck which ploughed through a crowd at the market on Monday night. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

A spokeswoman for Angela Merkel said the German Chancellor will discuss the deportation of rejected asylum applicants during a phone conversation with Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi.

The Berlin attack has put Europe on high alert over the Christmas period.

In the early hours of Friday morning, German special forces arrested two men suspected of planning an attack on a shopping mall in the city of OberhausenIn in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The men – two brothers from Kosovo, aged 28 and 31 – were arrested in the city of Duisburg on information from security sources, police said.

A police spokesman said there was no connection between the Duisburg arrests and the Amri case.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber in Berlin, Anneli Palmen in Duesseldorf, Emilio Parodi, Elvira Pollina and Ilaria Polleschi in Milan, Antonella Cinelli and Gavin Jones in Rome; Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Fingerprints of Tunisian suspect in Berlin attack found on truck door

Flowers are seen near the scene where a truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital last night in Berlin, Germany,

By Michelle Martin and Michael Nienaber

BERLIN (Reuters) – Investigators found fingerprints of a Tunisian suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack on the door of the truck that ploughed through the crowds, killing 12, German media said on Thursday, as a nationwide manhunt for the migrant was underway.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack in which a truck smashed through wooden huts selling gifts, mulled wine and sausages on Monday evening. It was the deadliest attack on German soil since 1980.

The media did not name their source for the report about 24-year-old Anis Amri’s fingerprints and police declined to comment.

Anis Amri in a combination image released by German police.

Anis Amri in a combination image released by German police. REUTERS/BKA

The Berlin attack has raised concerns across Europe in the approach to Christmas, with markets in France, target of a series of militant attacks over the last year, tightening security with concrete barriers. Troops were also being posted at churches.

The Berlin market reopened on Thursday ringed by concrete bollards.

Police in the western German city of Dortmund arrested four people who had been in contact with Amri, media reports said, but a spokesman for the chief federal prosecutor denied that and said he would give no further details on the operation.

Bild newspaper cited an anti-terrorism investigator as saying it was clear in spring that Amri was looking for accomplices for an attack and was interested in weapons.

ASYLUM REQUEST REJECTED

The report said preliminary proceedings had been opened against Amri in March based on information he was planning a robbery to get money to buy automatic weapons and “possibly carry out an attack”.

In mid-2016, he spoke to two IS fighters and Tunisian authorities listened in on their conversation before informing German authorities. Amri also offered himself as a suicide attacker on known Islamist chat sites, Bild said.

Police started looking for Amri after finding an identity document under the driver’s seat of the truck used in the attack. Authorities have stressed he is just a suspect and not necessarily the driver of the truck.

Broadcaster rbb said the perpetrator lost both his wallet and mobile phone while running away from the attack site.

On Wednesday, Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), said the Tunisian appeared to have arrived in Germany in July 2015 and his asylum application had been rejected in June 2016.

Klaus Bouillon, head of the group of interior ministers from Germany’s federal states, said Islamists often left identity documents at attack sites – as was the case in Paris attacks – to steer public opinion against refugees.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has faced calls to tighten asylum procedures since the attack. Armin Schuster of her Christian Democrats, told broadcaster NDR: “We need to send the signal: Only set off for Germany if you have a reason for asylum.”

The Italian Foreign Ministry said an Italian woman named Fabrizia Di Lorenzo was among the victims and the Israeli Foreign Ministry said an Israeli woman called Dalia Elyakim had been identified among the dead.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, Michael Nienaber, Thorsten Severin, Victoria Bryan in Berlin and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Mazar-i-Sharif,Afghanistan; editing by Ralph Boulton)