New Suspect In Berlin Terror Attack: German Police Hunt For Tunisian Islamist Man
By Tyler Durden
German police is searching for a Tunisian man after conveniently finding a temporary-stay permit under the driver’s seat of the truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people, according to Spiegel Online. The man is aged 21 or 23 and known by three different names, according to reports in the daily Allgemeine Zeitung and the Bild newspaper. According to a slightly conflicting report, the document was in the name of Anis A., born in the southern city of Tataouine in 1992.
Anis A.
As a reminder the man who rammed a truck through a crowd in Nice during Bastille Day celebrations, killing 86, was also Tunisian-born.
Bild reported that the Tunisian was known to police as a possibly dangerous individual, and part of a large Islamist network. A police operation is said to be under way in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where the permit was issued. Reports also say the suspect may have been injured in a struggle with the driver.
He applied for asylum in April and was given a temporary residence permit, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung said.
Police initially arrested a Pakistani asylum-seeker near the scene, but released him without charge on Tuesday. Authorities have warned that the attacker is on the run and may be armed. It is not clear if the perpetrator was acting alone or with others.
According to Reuters, the Polish driver of the killer truck was found shot dead in the cabin of the vehicle. An autopsy indicated that the driver was still alive at the time of the attack, the daily Bild reported. It quoted an investigator as saying there must have been a struggle with the attacker, who may have been injured. The 37-year-old Pole named Lukasz worked for his cousin Ariel Zurawski’s transport company in northern Poland. Zurawski described him as a “good guy” and said his body showed signs of a struggle with the assailant or assailants.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility, as it did for a similar attack in July when a Tunisian-born man rammed a truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice. Eighty-six people were killed, and the driver was shot dead by police.
The head of the Association of German Criminal Detectives, Andre Schulz, told German television late on Tuesday that police hoped to make another arrest soon. “I am relatively confident that we will perhaps tomorrow or in the near future be able to present a new suspect,” he said.
Meanwhile, Wednesday’s Passauer Neue Presse quoted the head of the group of interior ministers from Germany’s 16 federal states, Klaus Bouillon, as saying tougher security measures were needed.
“We want to raise the police presence and strengthen the protection of Christmas markets. We will have more patrols. Officers will have machine guns. We want to make access to markets more difficult, with vehicles parked across them,” Bouillon told the paper.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will run for a fourth term next year, has said it would be particularly repulsive …read more
Source: New Suspect In Berlin Terror Attack: German Police Hunt For Tunisian Islamist Man
