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Fingerprints in Berlin truck match those of suspect Anis Amri Fingerprints in Berlin truck match those of suspect Anis Amri
(about 2 hours later)
Fingerprints found in the cabin of the truck that ploughed into a Berlin Christmas market match those of the suspect Anis Amri, Germany’s interior minister has confirmed. Fingerprints found inside the cabin of the truck that ploughed into a Berlin Christmas market match those of the fugitive suspect Anis Amri, Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office confirmed on Thursday night.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Angela Merkel, Thomas de Maizière said the fingerprints and other evidence made it “highly probable” that the Tunisian suspect was the perpetrator of Monday’s terrorist attack. Spokeswoman Frauke Köhler said that fingerprints of the Algerian, who turned 24 on Thursday, had been discovered on the outside of the Polish-registered articulated truck, as well as the driver’s door and the vertical support beam in the vehicle’s window area.
The German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported earlier on Thursday that Amri’s fingerprints were found on the driver’s door of the Polish-registered truck, while the daily Berliner Zeitung reported that his fingerprints were also found on the steering wheel. Speaking at a joint press conference with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, said that the fingerprints and other evidence made it “highly probable” that the Algerian suspect was the perpetrator of Monday’s terror attack.
The chancellor said she hoped the suspect would be caught soon and that she had been heartened by the public reaction to the tragedy. “In the last few days I have been very proud of how level-headed the reaction of the majority of people to this situation has been.” Merkel told the press conference that she hoped the suspect would be caught “soon” and that she had been heartened by the public reaction to the tragedy: “In the last few days I have been very proud of how level-headed the reaction of the majority of people to this situation has been.”
Scrambling to catch the suspect, who is feared to be armed and dangerous, German police carried out overnight raids in the German capital and Dortmund. The findings came as Amri’s brother said he could not believe that his sibling would have carried out the atrocity. “There was no sign he had been radicalised. I’m sure he can’t have done this, that’s not why he emigrated. May God reveal the truth,” Abdelkader Amri told a reporter from Agence France-Presse outside his home in the town of Oueslatia, about 30 miles (50km) from Kairouan in eastern Tunisia.
Amri, 24, is thought to have temporarily stayed at a Dortmund flat which police raided at about 6.30am. In Berlin, police raided flats in the city’s Kreuzberg, Moabit and Prenzlauer Berg districts at 4am. “If my brother is behind the attack, I say to him: ‘You dishonour us’,” Abdelkader Amri said.
The state prosecutor has denied media reports that four of Amri’s “personal contacts” were arrested during the operation. “We are not aware of any arrests,” a spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday morning. The suspect, meanwhile, remained on the run, with German police left empty-handed after a day of raids around the country. In Berlin’s Moabit district, a commando unit deployed flash grenades to storm a Salafist meeting point that had been frequented by Amri but left without making arrests.
Later on Thursday, the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market reopened to the public after a memorial service. Farther south, in the city of Heilbronn, police searched a coach travelling from Luxembourg to Bosnia but later said the operation had been triggered by a case of mistaken identity. Overnight raids were conducted on apartments in Berlin and Dortmund, but reports of the arrest of Amri’s associates were unfounded.
Germany’s security services are facing mounting pressure to explain how Amri could have carried out the attack when he had been under covert surveillance for several months and was known to multiple intelligence agencies for apparent ties to Islamist extremists. With a man feared armed and dangerous still on the loose three after Monday’s deadly attack, German politicians rounded on the country’s security services, with one politician accusing intelligence agencies of “catastrophic mistakes”. “What we are dealing with is a failure of government that cannot be tolerated,” the opposition politician Christian Lindner of the Free Democrats told the German news agency DPA.
A deputy chairman of Merkel’s Christian Democratic party accused the intelligence agencies of incompetence, saying Wednesday’s reports on security failures had left him shocked. A deputy chairman of Merkel’s Christian Democratic party accused intelligence agencies of incompetence, saying Wednesday’s reports on security failures had left him “shocked”.
Amri registered in the North Rhine-Westphalia region when he entered Germany in July 2015 and had been based mainly in Berlin since February this year. He may have escaped the security agencies’ scrutiny due to a mix-up between regional authorities. Having first registered in the North-Rhine Westphalia region upon entering Germany in July 2015, the suspect had been identified as a security risk and put under close surveillance, with investigators even aware of his willingness to carry out a suicide attack. But a surveillance operation was stopped in September and Amri dropped off intelligence agencies’ radar in November, possibly due to a mix-up between regional authorities.
“So the attitude seems to be: he’s off to Berlin, so the case is closed for us here, now it’s Berlin’s turn,” the CDU deputy chair, Armin Laschet, told Deutschlandfunk radio station on Thursday. He called for better coordination between security agencies across the federal state system. Criticising the work of intelligence agencies in North-Rhine Westphalia, the CDU deputy chair, Armin Laschet, said: “So the attitude seems to be: ‘He’s gone to Berlin, so the case is closed for us here. Now it’s Berlin’s turn.”Laschet called for better coordination between security agencies across Germany’s federal state system.
A European arrest warrant for Amri was issued on Wednesday, two days after the attack which killed 12 people and injured dozens more. He appears to have used six different aliases and three different nationalities. The delay in identifying Amri as the driver of the truck also continued to raise eyebrows, after police had wrongly arrested a Pakistani asylum seeker in the direct aftermath of the attack.
Amri, who had his request for asylum turned down in July this year, was already known to several security agencies because of his links to radical Islamism, according to Ralf Jäger, the interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia. A tweet by the founder of the nationalist, anti-Islam movement Pegida had caused speculation as to whether police already knew the correct identity of the attacker on Monday night. Merely two hours after the attack, Lutz Bachmann had tweeted that the perpetrator was a Tunisian Muslim, citing “internal source” with Berlin’s police force.
Jäger said an investigation was launched earlier this year into suspicions Amri might be preparing “a serious act of violence against the state”. He was added to the government’s central terrorist watchlist in January and his telecommunications were monitored until September. But police on Thursday insisted that they had not obtained the wallet with the documents that identified Amri until Tuesday afternoon, stating that the truck had had to be moved from the site of the accident and searched by sniffer dogs before it could be properly scrutinised by police officers.
US officials said Amri was on a US no-fly list, had researched bomb-making online and had been in contact with Isis at least once, the New York Times reported. Anis Amri had fled Tunisia after the 2011 revolution, registering on the island of Lampedusa in February that year. According to Italian media, he started to show signs of aggressive behaviour while attending a centre for minors in Catania, reportedly having tried to set his school on fire. In October 2011, Amri was charged for robbery, arson and personal threats and sentenced to four years in jail.
German authorities said they had found Amri’s identity card under the driver’s seat of the truck. A wanted poster issued by the federal prosecutor offered a reward of up to €100,000 (£85,000) for members of the public who helped locate Amri, who is described as having worn dark clothing, bright shoes and a white scarf on Monday night. He reportedly spent time in prisons in Catania and then Palermo.
Tunisian authorities have reportedly questioned Amri’s parents. His brother Abdelkader told Associated Press: “I ask him to turn himself into the police. If it is proved that he is involved, we dissociate ourselves from it.” During his time in prison his “aggressive behaviour’’ was noted by guards, an official told the Guardian. After his release, Amri was sent to an immigration centre at Caltanissetta, from where he was due to be deported back to Tunisia. Since authorities in Tunisia refused to recognise Amri as a Tunisian citizen, however, the deportation did not take place. In the summer of 2015 Anis left Italy for Germany, first registering in the town of Emmerich am Rhine.
Abdelkader said his brother may have been radicalised in prison in Italy, where he went after leaving Tunisia following the Arab spring uprisings. In April 2016 Amri applied for asylum at a refugee shelter in Kleve, also in North-Rhine Westphalia, but his application was rejected only weeks later. Amri had pretended to be an Egyptian national, but German officials had noticed that he had already registered elsewhere under different names. He was therefore due to be deported back to Tunisia.
German police admitted they initially detained the wrong man in the immediate aftermath of the attack. They released a 23-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker on Tuesday after he spent hours in custody. But as in Italy, authorities in his home country did not recognise him as one of their citizens. On 30 July, Amri was caught in a routine check of a coach in Friedrichshafen and moved to a prison in Ravensburg after police noticed that he was due to be deported and carrying fake Italian ID documents. Two days later the Tunisian was released again, most likely because of the missing documents from Tunisia.
Amri reportedly had links to a Salafist circle around Ahmad Abdelazziz, also known as Abu Walaa, an Iraqi-born preacher based in the German town of Hildesheim, who was arrested in November. Abu Walaa is suspected by the state prosecutor of openly supporting Isis and helping to recruit people for the terrorist group. The preacher denies having any links to Isis.
According to Amri’s watchlist file, extracts from which were quoted by the broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk, he was suspected of recruiting collaborators for “an attack with an Islamist motivation” and was trying to obtain large-calibre automatic rifles through contacts in France.
The state prosecutor said Amri’s telecommunications had been under surveillance between March and September, after investigators had received information about a planned burglary with the possible aim of acquiring funds to purchase arms.
However, the Tunisian suspect dropped off the security agencies’ radar in November. Newspapers were highly critical of the intelligence services. The Süddeutsche Zeitung said the authorities had “fallen asleep”, while Der Spiegel weekly said on its website that “they had him in their crosshairs” and he still managed to vanish.
The best-selling Bild tabloid said in a commentary that in future such suspects had to be locked up and not allowed “to roam free”.