Berlin – German authorities came under fire Thursday after it emerged that the prime suspect in Berlin’s deadly truck attack, a rejected Tunisian asylum seeker, was known as a potentially dangerous extremist.
Prosecutors issued a Europe-wide wanted notice for 24-year-old Anis Amri, offering a 100,000-euro [$104,000] reward for information leading to his arrest and warning he “could be violent and armed”.
A temporary residence permit believed to belong to Amri, alleged to have links to the terrorist extremist scene, was found in the cab of the 40-tonne lorry that rammed through a packed Christmas market in Berlin Monday, killing 11.
The twelfth victim, the hijacked truck’s Polish driver, was found shot in the cab. Police have searched a refugee center in Emmerich, western Germany, where Amri stayed a few months ago, as well as two apartments in Berlin.
In a sign of defiance, Berlin was set to reopen the Christmas market at the central Breitscheid square where the articulated truck cut a swathe of death and destruction through the festive crowd.
Meanwhile, as the manhunt intensified, questions surfaced about how the suspect had been able to slip through the net, avoiding arrest and deportation despite being on the radar of several security agencies.
Source: News Agencies
