Berlin Christmas market reopens
Fingerprints of suspect found in truck’s cab
Tunisian suspect Anis Amri’s fingerprints have been found in the cab of the truck that plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin, indicating that he was driving the vehicle, German officials said Thursday.
Authorities across Europe were scrambling to find the 24-year-old suspect, a day after Germany issued a wanted notice for him and warned that he may be “violent and armed.”
In Berlin, the Christmas market that was ripped apart by the truck attack reopened, with increased security measures, in a signal of the city’s resilience.
German authorities have offered a reward of up to 100,000 euros ($140,000) for information leading to Amri’s arrest. Twelve people were killed and 56 wounded in Monday evening’s rampage, which was claimed by the Islamic State group.
“We can tell you today that there are additional indications that this suspect is with high probability really the perpetrator,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said after visiting the Federal Criminal Police Office along with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Fingerprints were found in the cab, and there are other, additional indications that suggest this,” he told reporters. “It is all the more important that the search is successful as soon as possible.”
In Tunisia, Amri’s brothers spoke to the Associated Press, urging him to surrender to authorities.
“Whether he did it or not, I ask him to report to the police. We are suffering because of him,” said Abdelkader Amri. “I hope that it’s not my brother and if it was confirmed that it was him, we dissociate ourselves from him and this operation,” brother Walid Amri told The Associated Press.
Walid said Amri may have been radicalized in prison in Italy, where he went after leaving Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.
Italy’s justice ministry confirmed media reports that Amri was repeatedly transferred among Sicilian prisons for bad conduct, with prison records saying he bullied inmates and tried to spark insurrections. He served 31/2 years for setting a fire at a refugee centre and making threats, among other things.
German officials say Amri has used at least six different names and three nationalities in his travels around Europe.
German authorities had deemed Amri, who arrived in the country last year, a potential threat long before the attack this week — and even kept him under surveillance for six months this year before halting the operation.
They had been trying to deport him after his asylum application was rejected in July but were unable to do so because he lacked valid identity papers and Tunisia initially denied that he was a citizen.