A German minister has admitted security forces knew the suspected Berlin attacker was a terror threat but failed to detain or deport him before he ploughed a lorry into a Christmas market.….. the Tunisian man had already been put under investigation over a previous attack plot but missing paperwork meant he could not be ejected from Germany.
From one bungle to another, with some authorities not taking the jihad threat seriously enough, even when it was right in front of their faces.
Anis Amri spent four years in jail in Italy for burning down a school, and then left the country for Germany last year. Since then, he was arrested at least three times and was identified as an ISIS supporter who received weapons training, but authorities kept on losing him; now it’s revealed that missing paperwork precluded him from being kicked out of Germany.
Local police launched an investigation into the suspect over a separate attack plot earlier this year and handed their information to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which shut the investigation in September.
When asked why Amri was not arrested, a spokesperson for the North Rhine-Westphalia interior ministry replied: “I don’t know, ask Berlin.”
Yesterday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that it would be “particularly sickening” if the Berlin jihad attacker turned out to be refugee. Not only does it look as if her nightmare has come true, but it is also “particularly sickening” to discover the level of incompetence of German authorities, allowing for Amri’s deadly truck attack.
Berlin attack: German authorities investigated Anis Amri over previous terror plot but failed to deport suspect, by Lizzie Dearden, Independent, December 21, 2016:
A German minister has admitted security forces knew the suspected Berlin attacker was a terror threat but failed to detain or deport him before he ploughed a lorry into a Christmas market.
Ralf Jäger, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, told a press conference the Tunisian man had already been put under investigation over a previous attack plot but missing paperwork meant he could not be ejected from Germany.
Anis Amri, 24, was the subject of a meeting of its Joint Terror Protection Centre and federal and local government officials shared information as recently as last month, with the police warning he posed a threat.
Prosecutors are offering a €100,000 reward for information leading to his arrest, describing Amri as 5ft 10in tall and weighing just under 12 stone, with black hair and brown eyes.
“If you see the person being sought, notify the police,” read an appeal. “Do not put yourself in danger, because the person could be violent and armed.”
Mr Jäger said a separate investigation was launched into plans for “a serious act of violence against the state” earlier this year but Amri could not be deported because of a bureaucratic dispute with Tunisia, which originally said he was not a citizen.
“The man could not be deported because he had no valid identification papers,” the minister added, saying Germany requested the necessary documents in August.
They arrived today – two days after the Berlin attack – and would have allowed authorities to carry out the deportation order issued after Amri’s asylum application was rejected in June.
A spokesperson for the North Rhine-Westphalia interior ministry told The Independent local police launched an investigation into the suspect over a separate attack plot earlier this year and handed their information to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which shut the investigation in September.
When asked why Amri was not arrested, he replied: “I don’t know, ask Berlin.” A spokesperson for the BKA said she could not comment on previous investigations but an anonymous source told Reuters there was insufficient evidence to proceed.
Prosecutors launched a probe into claims Amri was planning a break-in to finance buying automatic weapons for an attack, but surveillance that started in March failed to reveal evidence of a terror plot and was stopped six months later….