U.S. CITIES STEP UP SECURITY EFFORTS
American officials say there are no specific threats; ISIL claims responsibility for Berlin attack
Cities around the USA on Tuesday bolstered security around holiday events after a deadly attack on a crowded Berlin Christmas market that the Islamic State claimed one of its followers carried out.
The terror group claimed responsibility for the attack that killed 12 and injured 50 as German authorities resumed searching for the truck driver who plowed into revelers at the Christmas market.
Authorities released a suspect late Tuesday whom law enforcement officials had detained shortly after the attack a day earlier. Prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence tying the suspect to the “act of terrorism.”
In a statement through its Amaq News Agency, the militant group — also known as ISIL or ISIS — called the attacker a “soldier of the Islamic State.”
The attack on the Christmas market had similarities to vehicular assaults the Islamic State claimed responsibility for on the campus of Ohio State University last month and in Nice, France, in July, raising concerns of some U.S. and European police departments.
In New York and Chicago, law enforcement officials said they had no intelligence that indicates specific threats to their cities, but they have increased police presence around Christmas-related events after the Berlin incident.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller said the department dispatched 500 uniformed counterterrorism officers on the
The NYPD dispatched 500 counterterrorism officers. Chicago police stepped up foot and bike patrols around Daley Plaza.
streets of the nation’s largest city. The Chicago Police Department stepped up foot and bike patrols around the city’s downtown Daley Plaza.
In Boston, Mayor Martin Walsh said the city deployed police and put barriers in place around the “Boston Holiday” market. Walsh said police are monitoring social media to keep an eye out for potential attacks.
“Our police are always on high alert,” Walsh said. “Part of what we want to try to do with technology — that we’re being criticized for — is being able to look on Twitter and look on Facebook just to make sure something like this that might be planned, that we can break it up.”
Investigators in Berlin said the truck, which carried steel beams, was stolen in Poland. It has Polish license plates, and a man found dead in the passenger seat was a Polish national.
The dead passenger may have been the truck’s original driver, and the truck’s owner said he feared the vehicle could have been hijacked.
The Polish victim was identified as Lukasz Urban, 37.
“I believe he would not give up the vehicle and would defend it to the end if he were attacked,” Lukasz Wasik, the manager of the trucking company where Urban worked, told Poland’s state broadcaster TVP.
In the incident at Ohio State last month, a young Somali refugee rammed his car into a group of people on campus, then got out of his vehicle and attacked victims with a knife.
The attacker, who had posted a rant on a Facebook page about the treatment of Muslims around the world shortly before the incident, was fatally shot by a police officer but injured 11 people in the attack.
In the Nice attack, a truck driver ran over dozens of people, killing 86, on the city’s promenade during Bastille Day celebrations.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for both the Nice and Columbus attacks.
Last week, German media reported that a 12-year-old boy tried to set off a nail bomb at a Christmas market in the southern German city of Ludwigshafen. That bomb failed to work, so the boy allegedly left explosives in a backpack near a building housing a shopping center and government office. Those explosives also failed.
Nobody was injured in either incident. Focus magazine reported the boy was born in Germany to Iraqi parents and was “religiously radicalized.” It said the boy was being held by German social workers while an investigation takes place.
The State Department warned last month of a “heightened risk” of terrorist attacks in Europe, especially during the holiday season. It said it had “credible information” that the Islamic State and its affiliates planned assaults focusing on the holidays.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said the suspect in custody was from Pakistan and had applied for asylum in Germany. Tuesday, prosecutors said there was no proof tying the man to the attack, and he was released.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it would be particularly troubling if the attacker was an asylum seeker.
“This would be especially despicable toward the many Germans who are daily engaged in helping refugees, and toward the many people who truly need this protection,” she said.
Miller, the NYPD deputy commissioner, said in an interview on MSNBC Tuesday that law enforcement officials are increasingly seeing a “shorter flash to bang ” for terror suspects, referring to the period from when suspects radicalize to when they attempt to carry out an attack.
European law enforcement agencies said they were on high alert after the Berlin incident.
In London, the police department announced it was changing its road closures in the area surrounding Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard military ceremony, an event that draws large crowds of tourists. New barriers were to be installed near the palace by Wednesday.
France increased security at its Christmas markets after the attack.
In Italy, Sen. Giacomo Stucchi, the head of Parliament’s intelligence commission, told Sky TG24 TV Tuesday that he expects an increase in the number of people Italian authorities deem necessary to be closely watched as possible extremists.
“What we want to try to do with technology — that we’re being criticized for — is being able to look on Twitter and look on Facebook just to make sure something like this that might be planned, that we can break it up.” Boston Mayor Martin Walsh