Berlin suspect was on cop radar
A Tunisian refugee who was under surveillance in Germany as a possible terror threat but slipped through authorities’ clutches is suspected in the deadly truck attack at a Berlin Christmas market, officials said.
Prosecutors said they identified Anis Amri — who has used six aliases and three nationalities — when they discovered his asylum papers under the driver’s seat of the truck that plowed into a crowd, killing 12 people and wounding 48 others Monday.
Germany’s Center for Terror Defense had been monitoring Amri since January because of his links to jihadist groups, Britain’s The Guardian reported, citing security sources.
He landed on the radar of German cops earlier this year when he asked a police informant where he could get a gun — and also was investigated for a suspected terror plot.
Despite his terror ties, Germany couldn’t deport him.
He arrived in Germany in July 2015 and applied for asylum, but his request was denied. Authorities couldn’t deport him because he didn’t have valid ID papers showing his nationality, said Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of the German state of North RhineWestphalia, where Amri had registered in a refugee center.
Instead, he was given a “Duldung,” or a “temporary suspension of deportation.”
“Tunisia at first denied that this person was its citizen, and the pa- pers weren’t issued for a long time,” Jaeger said. “They arrived today.”
Authorities searched for Amri across Europe on Wednesday, and a reward for 100,000 euros — about $104,000 — was offered for his capture.
Amri, who received weapons training before moving to Germany, was described as “highly dangerous” and a member of a “large Islamic organization,” officials said.
He was en route to Italy in August when he was arrested in Friedrichshafen with forged documents — but he was released by a judge, sources told CNN.
Earlier this year, police launched proceedings against him on suspicion that he was planning a “serious act of violence against the state,” officials said.
Berlin prosecutors said they began investigating him last March after receiving a tip that he could be planning a break-in to buy automatic weapons. But they found no evidence of a plot and closed the investigation in September.
Tunisian authorities were questioning Amri’s family, a security official told Agence France-Presse, and another source said he had been arrested several times in Tunisia for alleged drug use.
“When I saw the picture of my brother in the media, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’m in shock, and can’t believe it’s him who committed this crime,” Abdelkader Amri, told AFP. But “if he’s guilty, he deserves every condemnation. We reject terrorism and terrorists.”