Outrage over market attack bungle

German authorities blasted for doing nothing despite having suspect under radar

German authorities came under fire yesterday after it emerged that the prime suspect in Berlin’s deadly truck attack, a rejected Tunisian asylum seeker, was known as a potentially dangerous jihadist.

Prosecutors have issued a Europe-wide wanted notice for 24-year-old Anis Amri, offering a ß100 000 (R1.7-million) reward for information leading to his arrest and warning that he could be violent and armed.

Investigators found his fingerprints on the door of the truck that ploughed through the crowds at the Christmas market, killing 12, German media said, as a nationwide manhunt for the migrant was under way.

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday evening.

A temporary residence permit believed to belong to Amri was also found in the cab of the 40-ton truck.

Police have searched a refugee centre in Emmerich, western Germany, where Amri stayed a few months ago, and two flats in Berlin.

In a sign of defiance, Berlin was set to reopen the Christmas market at the central Breitscheid square.

Organisers said they would dim the lights and tone down the Christmas music but begin serving mulled wine and open the traditional market huts, as Berliners left a sea of flowers and candles at the site in honour of the victims.

But 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.

“The authorities had him in their cross-hairs and he still managed to vanish,” Der Spiegel weekly said on its website.

Top-selling daily Bild’s front page headline screamed “Deportation Failure!” while tabloid BZ said starkly: “They knew him. They did nothing” next to a photograph of the heavyset Amri.

Conservative politician Stephan Mayer, a critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal stance on asylum, told public radio the case held up a magnifying glass to the failings of her migration policy.

But Armin Laschet, a deputy leader of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, placed the blame with regional security authorities, calling their failure to keep tabs on Amri shocking.

In a revelation likely to stoke public anger, German officials said they had already been investigating Amri, suspecting he was planning an attack.

The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Ralf Jaeger, said counter-terrorism officials had exchanged information about Amri, most recently last month, and a probe had been launched suspecting that he was preparing “a serious act of violence against the state”.

Berlin prosecutors said separately that Amri had been suspected of planning a burglary to raise cash to buy automatic weapons, possibly to carry out an attack.

But after keeping watch on him from March until September they failed to find evidence of the plot, learning only that Amri was a small-time drug dealer, and the surveillance was stopped.

The New York Times reported, citing US officials, that Amri had done online research on how to make explosive devices and had communicated with IS at least once, via Telegram Messenger.

He was also on a US no-fly list. Amri had left Tunisia after the 2011 revolution and lived in Italy for three years, a Tunisian security source said.

Italian media said he had served time in prison there for setting fire to a school.

He arrived in Germany in July last year, but his application for asylum was rejected this June.

His deportation, however, was caught up in red tape with Tunisia, which long denied he was a citizen.

The apparent security failings in the case triggered fresh criticism of Merkel’s refugee policy, which has seen more than a million people arrive since last year. AFP