German police have launched a nationwide manhunt for a 23-year-old Tunisian man named as Anis A after finding an identity document underneath the driver’s seat of the lorry used to kill 12 people at a Berlin Christmas market on Monday.
The document was described as a temporary residence permit issued to a Tunisian citizen born in Tataouine in 1992.
The German magazine Spiegel reported that the suspect had two aliases, the other being Ahmed A. The document was issued by the city of Kleve in North Rhine-Westphalia, near the Dutch border. However, it is believed that he had recently been living in Berlin.
According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, he applied for asylum in Germany in April 2016 and his request is still being processed. He committed grievous bodily harm in the summer but disappeared before he could be charged, the paper said.
Earlier today, security sources said “measures are imminent” in North Rhine-Westphalia.
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On Monday, 12 people — including six Germans and one Italian — were killed when a 40-tonne truck careered through a packed Christmas market in Berlin. Another 48 people were injured, many seriously. It is believed that a number of them include tourists.
The truck was believed to have been hijacked by the killer on Monday afternoon. At some point the terrorist then stabbed and shot dead the original driver of the lorry, a Polish 37-year-old father of one called Lukasz Urban.
Yesterday German prosecutors and senior police admitted that they had bungled the early investigation by arresting the wrong man. A Pakistani refugee had been detained within an hour of the 8pm attack in Berlin after he was seen running away from the market area.
But after interrogating him for 20 hours, they released him without charge, admitting they had no evidence to link him to the murders. The bungle gave the killer valuable hours to escape.
Last night, as an international manhunt was launched, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The terror network said that the Berlin killer had acted in revenge for Western military intervention against them.
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The attack was the worst terrorist action on German soil since 1980.
Many victims are yet to be named but the father of Fabrizia Di Lorenzo, a 31-year-old Italian woman who worked in Berlin, said he had given up hope of seeing his daughter again after her phone was found at the scene of the Kurfürstendamm market massacre.
The police said that they had received more than 500 leads so far and were hunting a man they believed to be armed.
According to Bild newspaper, the post-mortem examination of the Polish driver, Mr Urban, who was found dead in the passenger seat of the truck, had shown that he was alive at the time of the attack.
One investigator told Bild: “There must have been a fight.” The terrorist is believed to have stabbed Urban because he grabbed the steering wheel to stop him. He then shot him dead and escaped, investigators believe. If confirmed, Urban’s actions saved many lives because the truck only travelled for about 60 metres through the market before veering back onto the road. If it had carried on ploughing straight through the market, the death toll would have been far higher.
