German media published CCTV images which reportedly show Anis Amri
A man in dark clothing and a hat is seen outside a mosque hours after attack
Amri was also reportedly seen outside the same mosque on two other days
Mosque is understood to have been raided by police on Thursday morning
|
e-mail[1]
4
View
comments
Police have arrested two men at the mosque where Europe’s most wanted man was allegedly seen just eight hours after driving a 25-ton lorry into a crowd at a Christmas market.
The men, one of whom was in traditional Muslim dress, wrestled with police, shouted expletives and lashed out at journalists and members of the public as they were bundled away.
They were held by police hunting fugitive Anis Amri, 24, who is suspected of being behind the wheel when a 25-tonne lorry careered into a crowd at around 8pm on Monday, killing 12 and injuring 56 others.
The arrests, in Berlin’s Moabit neighbourhood, came as it was revealed Amri was allegedly captured on CCTV at the mosque just eight hours after the atrocity.
Images show a man in dark clothing and a cap standing in a doorway in the early hours of Tuesday, German public broadcaster rbb[2] reported.
A man, alleged to be Amri, was also seen at the same mosque on two different days in the week leading up to the atrocity.
Scroll down for video
Shortly before 4am on the day after the attack, Amri was allegedly caught on a security camera as he stood outside a mosque in Berlin’s Moabit neighbourhood, pictured
Images obtained by rbb show a man in dark clothing and a cap standing in a doorway in the early hours of Tuesday
A man, alleged to be Amri, was seen at the same mosque on two different days in the week leading up to the atrocity. Pictured, a man alleged to be Amir on December 14, left, and 15
Worship: Books were laid out on one of the tables inside the mosque in Moabit, Berlin
A far-right leader in Germany knew the suspect in the Christmas market attack was a Tunisian just two hours after the attack – despite police initially arresting a Pakistani man, it has emerged
Timeline: Anis Amri is believed to have been seen at a mosque in Berlin twice in the week leading up to the attack
Pictures show Islamic books and leaflets on a table and a door hanging off its hinges at the mosque, which is understood to have been raided on Thursday by police who used stun grenades as they entered the building.
It comes as separate dashcam footage showed the moment the lorry used in the attack careered along a road moments before smashing into the market at 40mph.
Meanwhile, German terror police this morning swooped to arrest two Kosovan brothers over fears they were plotting an attack on one of Germany’s biggest shopping malls in the city of Oberhausen in North Rhine-Westphalia.
However, they are not believed to have links with the Berlin attack.
Intelligence sources confirmed last night that they believed the man in the CCTV footage to be Amri, rbb said.
It comes as pictures emerged showing the interior of the building.
Last night the door was seen hanging on its hinges, and a rudimentary attempt to fix it with pieces of wood and masking tape appeared to have been abandoned.
A window in the hall outside the mosque, which was covered with graffiti and dirt, had been smashed.
Masking tape used to try and repair a broken door lay abandoned on a shelf inside
Last night the door was seen hanging on its hinges, and a rudimentary attempt to fix it with pieces of wood and masking tape appeared to have been abandoned
Islamic books and pamphlets were stored in a cupboard inside the mosque in the Moabit area
Revealed: Pictured for the first time, this is the interior of the mosque where Europe’s most wanted man was allegedly seen just eight hours after the Berlin Christmas market attack
KOSOVAN BROTHERS ARRESTED OVER ‘PLOT TO ATTACK MALL’
Two Kosovo-born brothers have been detained on suspicion they were planning to carry out an attack on a shopping mall in western Germany, days after a truck attack in Berlin that killed 12 people.
Police said today that the men, aged 28 and 31, were detained in Duisburg in the industrial Ruhr region shortly after midnight.
Authorities suspect the two men may have been planning an attack on the Centro mall in nearby Oberhausen. They are now probing what the pair’s intentions were and whether anyone else was involved.
Two Kosovo-born brothers have been detained on suspicion they were planning to carry out an attack on a shopping mall in Oberhausen, western Germany, days after a truck attack in Berlin that killed 12 people
Police said in a statement that they increased their presence at Centro and a nearby Christmas market on Thursday evening after receiving a tip from ‘security sources.’
Officers in uniform and plain clothes patrolled the area, but the mall remained open.
Centro is one of Germany’s biggest malls, with more than 250 shops.
It opened 20 years ago on the site of a former steelworks.
There was no indication of any connection between the detentions and Monday’s attack in Berlin.
Authorities are searching for Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, as the suspected driver of the truck that ploughed into a Christmas market.
Inside, the place of worship was bare and dark, with no lightbulbs in the sockets. Islamic books, pamphlets and evangelical material were displayed on a table, and a traditional robe was hanging from a peg on the wall.
At the bottom of a flight of stairs leading to the cellar were three pairs of shoes on a rack, together with two suitcases. According to neighbours, the underground floor housed living accommodation.
Elite commando units hunting for Amri, 24, blew up the front door of the mosque, threw in stun grenades and witnesses reported hearing gunfire.
The target was the ‘Fussilet 33’ association’s building in Perleberger Strasse in the south-east of the capital.
Neighbouring flats are also being searched, according to German media.
It was raided in 2015 over allegations they were raising money for extremists in Syria. An imam was put under surveillance.
Commenting after the images emerged, Christian Lindner, head of the opposition Free Democrats told the Times[3]: ‘That makes me speechless. We have to investigate how gaps in the monitoring of such a threat can happen in our country.’
Local people said that the mosque, pictured, was used by a moderate Turkish group until two years ago
Police raided the the ‘Fussilet 33’ association’s building in Perleberger Strasse on Thursday
Local residents reported hearing gunshots when police raided the mosque. Pictured, the stairwell of the building
A lone chair was left inside the mosque, where the floor was covered with an ornamental rug
A traditional robe was hanging from a peg on the wall of the mosque raided by police
But interior minister told the newspaper: ‘Everything is being done to apprehend this suspect with high professionalism and excellent co-ordination nationally and internationally.’
Last night, it emerged that Amri was heard by German security officials offering to carry out a ‘suicide attack’ – but he was written off as being an ‘errand boy’, Die Welt reported.
It was also revealed that he was jailed in 2010 for hijacking a lorry in Tunisia with experts saying he may have learned how to drive trucks following the theft.
Yesterday it emerged that Lutz Bachmann, who fronts the anti-immigrant PEGIDA group, had tweeted on Monday night that he had ‘internal police information’ about the nationality of the lorry driver who murdered 12 revellers in Berlin.
At the time, police had announced the arrest of a Pakistani asylum seeker – it was only when he was released that Tunisian Anis Amri was publicly identified as the chief suspect.
It comes as conspiracy theories surfaced online questioning how police missed the suspect’s ID in the truck for 24 hours.
Lutz Bachmann, who fronts the anti-immigrant PEGIDA group, tweeted on Monday night that he had ‘internal police information’ about the nationality of the lorry driver who murdered 12 revellers in Berlin
When asked to explain how he knew this information, he wrote in a follow-up tweet: ‘Just need the right connections and a whistleblower that is sick of the lies.’
Controversial Lutz Bachmann (pictured) tweeted his information on Monday night – two days before police officially confirmed that they were hunting a Tunisian suspect
Suspect: Amri made his way from Tunisia to Germany after entering Europe through Italy
Controversial Bachmann tweeted his information on Monday night – before police officially confirmed that they were hunting a Tunisian suspect.
He wrote: ‘Internal info from the police leadership: The attacker is a Tunisian Muslim.’
When asked to explain how he knew this information, he wrote in a follow-up tweet: ‘Just need the right connections and a whistleblower that is sick of the lies.’
Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists have questioned the ‘suspicious’ discovery of the Berlin attack suspect’s wallet in the lorry used to murder 12 people at a packed Christmas market.
German police named Anis Amri as the chief suspect in the attack after finding his ID – apparently abandoned by the asylum seeker in the footwell of the truck as he fled the scene.
Extreme measures to capture prime suspect
The EUR100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Anis Amri, the Tunisian prime suspect in Berlin’s deadly truck attack, is a rarity in Europe.
Rewards in recent years have been offered over war crimes, a political assassination and a far-left group’s assault on the US embassy in Athens.
One example is notorious Serbian war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic, who eluded arrest for 16 years, saw his bounty go up to 10 million euros (£14 million at the time) before he was finally arrested in May 2011 to face trial in The Hague.
However, no-one cashed in on the reward, for the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ was tracked down through intelligence work.
By contrast, in the United States the practice is well entrenched, going back to the Wild West days of Jesse James and Billy the Kid.
The highest reward ever offered by the FBI was £25 million for information leading to the capture of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, killed in a US Navy Seal raid in Pakistan in May 2011.
The United States last Friday matched that figure for the shadowy leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, more than doubling the £10 million originally on his head to £25 million.
Will the lorry killer strike again? Police and the security services are hunting the terrorist behind the Christmas market attack
Conspiracy theories surfaced online with some questioning the ‘convenient’ discovery of the suspect’s wallet – 24 hours after police had first scoured the truck
Conspiracy theorists have questioned the ‘suspicious’ discovery of the Berlin attack suspect’s wallet in the lorry used to murder 12 people at a packed Christmas market
The discovery of the wallet was only made 24 hours after police had originally scoured the cab for clues and after wasting precious time questioning the wrong suspect
But the discovery was only made 24 hours after they had originally scoured the cab for clues and after wasting precious time questioning the wrong suspect – a Pakistani called Naved Baluch who had no blood on his clothes, no injuries and denied having anything to do with the bloodbath.
Conspiracy theories have since appeared online questioning the situation.
One wrote: ‘Why would the driver of the truck that drove into the Berlin Christmas market leave his ID under the seat?
Seems too convenient.’
Another said: ‘It seems suspicious to me that Berlin truck driver that killed people would leave his wallet in the truck as he fled the scene.’
German police have been accused of a series of blunders in the investigation. They wasted valuable time having arrested the wrong man before realising the wallet of their chief suspect was in the truck.
Truck attacker was a troubled inmate in Italy
Italian authorities say the Tunisian fugitive in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was a problem inmate when he was in Italy.
The Italian justice ministry on Thursday confirmed media reports that 24-year-old Anis Amri was repeatedly admonished and transferred among Sicilian prisons for bad conduct.
Prison records say he bullied inmates and tried to spark insurrections.
In all, Amri was held in six different prisons on Sicily, where he served three years for setting a fire at a refugee center and making threats, among other charges.
But Italy apparently recorded no signs that Amri was becoming radicalized to embrace extremist violence.
Amri reached Italy in 2011, along with tens of thousands of young Tunisian men who arrived by boat during the Arab Spring revolutions.
At the time, police had announced that their chief suspect was a Pakistani asylum seeker – it was only when he was released that they turned their attention to Tunisian Anis Amri
German police have been accused of a series of blunders in the investigation.
Pictures show the market from above this morning
Mourning: A market worker looks at some of the tributes left at the scene of the atrocity
Police launched a series of raids this morning amid reports four people have been arrested
The Christmas market reopened yesterday morning as the hunt for the attack suspect continued
They have also been accused of missing a number of opportunities after it emerged that Anis Amris, a lifelong criminal, should have been deported months ago.
The 24-year-old, who has a 100,000 euro reward on his head, was under the surveillance of German intelligence for several months following his arrival in the country in 2015.
He had been arrested three times this year and his asylum application was rejected, but deportation papers were never served and he disappeared.
The Tunisian radical was known to be a supporter of Islamic State and to have received weapons training.
He also tried to recruit an accomplice for a terror plot – which the authorities knew about – but still remained at large.
Death toll could rise as the injured fight for their lives
Berlin’s state government has said 12 people are still being treated for severe injuries after Monday night’s truck attack on a Christmas market, and that an unspecified number of them are still in critical condition.
Another 14 people with less serious injuries were also still hospitalized, while 30 others have been discharged.
Manhunt: The ISIS killer behind Germany’s worst terror attack since 1980 on Monday night has been given an 18 hour head start after police bungled the probe
Twelve people were killed in the attack.
Berlin’s state health ministry on Thursday raised the number of market attack victims treated in Berlin hospitals to 56, up from 48.
It said some victims had reached hospitals on their own after the attack.
He was under investigation for planning a ‘serious act of violence against the state’ and counter-terrorism officials had exchanged information about him last month.
Reports suggest intelligence services might have even lost track of Amri as recently as just a few weeks ago after he went underground.
The potentially fatal mistakes heaped further shame on the German security services, who wasted several hours questioning an innocent Pakistani asylum seeker in the aftermath of the truck rampage, which killed 12 shoppers and wounded 48.
Meanwhile, investigators say they have found fingerprints of the Tunisian suspect on the door of the truck that ploughed through the crowds on Monday night, according to reports in Germany.
The media did not name their source for the report about Amri’s fingerprints and police declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
Seconds from disaster: Dashcam footage shows the hijacked truck (circled in red) speeding past waiting cars as it careers towards the pedestrianised street
Merkel hopes for ‘quick arrest’ of the Tunisian truck terror suspect
German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced hope Thursday that the prime suspect in Berlin’s deadly truck attack would be caught quickly, after it emerged that the Tunisian rejected asylum seeker was a known jihadist.
In an act of defiance, Berliners flocked to the same Christmas market that witnessed the murder of 12 people on Monday, as it reopened for the first time in three days.
Just as Merkel praised the country for not succumbing to fear in the wake of the attack, she insisted that authorities would manage to track down the alleged assailant.
‘I am certain we will meet this test we are facing,’ she said, voicing confidence for a ‘hopefully quick arrest’.
‘In the past few days I have been very proud of how calmly most people reacted to the situation.’
Prosecutors have issued a Europe-wide wanted notice for 24-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri, offering a 100,000-euro (£104,000) reward for information leading to his arrest and warning he could be armed and dangerous.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the case against Amri was hardening, with his fingerprints found in the cab of the 40-tonne truck, as well as his temporary residence permit.
The articulated lorry rammed through the crowd late Monday, killing 12.
The twelfth victim, the hijacked truck’s Polish driver, was found shot in the cab.
Berliners returned Thursday to the market at the central Breitscheid square, leaving a sea of flowers and candles for the victims and signs reading ‘Love Not Hate’.
SHARE PICTURE
References
^ e-mail (www.dailymail.co.uk)
^ rbb (www.rbb-online.de)
^ Times (www.thetimes.co.uk)