Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 2:54 pm Post subject: Mon19Dec BERLIN Gladio C Christmas market lorry kills 9
Deutche Bundes Luge - Polish driver found dead in the cab but random Muslim found 'fleeing the scene', like any sensible person would, and paraded around the world for 24 hours as the perpetrator. Until 'whoops, we got it wrong.'
A truck that crashed into a Christmas market near the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedaechtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church) in Berlin is pictured on 20 December 2016.Image copyrightAFP
The German authorities say they cannot be sure if a man in custody was behind Monday's lorry attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people.
"We have to entertain the theory that the detainee might possibly not have been the perpetrator," federal prosecutor Peter Frank told reporters.
The man detained, who has denied involvement, arrived in Germany from Pakistan at the end of last year.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to punish those responsible for the Berlin attack "as harshly as the law requires".
Her open-door policy on migration, which saw 890,000 asylum seekers arrive in Germany last year, has divided the country, with critics calling it a security threat.
The lorry ploughed through the popular market at Breitscheidplatz, near west Berlin's main shopping street, the Kurfuerstendamm.
Loaded with steel beams, it veered into the market at 20:14 local time (19:14 GMT), crashing through wooden huts and stands packed with tourists and locals.
The BBC's Jenny Hill: "What's really eerie is that the lights are still twinkling in what remains of the market"
Police believe the lorry drove 50-80 metres (160-260 ft) through the market area, Germany's DPA news agency reports.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said 18 of the 48 people injured in the attack were in a serious condition.
He arrived in Germany on 31 December of last year, turning up in Berlin in February, Mr de Maiziere said. His asylum application had not been completed.
Citing security sources, German media identified him as Naved B, 23, who was reportedly known to police for minor crimes, but not terrorist links.
Special forces stormed a hangar at Berlin's defunct Tempelhof airport, where they believed he had been living in a shelter.
The suspect was seized after fleeing the scene on foot for more than a mile (2km) towards the Tiergarten, a large public park.
A witness who followed him called the police, who quickly detained the suspect near the Victory Column monument.
After Berlin police expressed doubt about whether they had in fact detained the right man, Mr Frank, the country's public prosecutor general, said: "Currently we don't know whether it was one or several perpetrators.
Ariel Zurawski, the Polish owner of the lorry, confirmed his driver had been missing since 16:00 (15:00 GMT) on Monday.
The lorry was registered in Poland but it is unclear whether it was travelling from Poland or returning from Italy, as some reports suggest.
Chancellor Merkel said she was "shocked and very saddened", adding: "We don't want to live with fear of evil."
Germany's interior ministry said Christmas markets in Berlin would remain closed on Tuesday but other markets outside of the capital would operate as normal.
A senior member of Germany's anti-immigration AfD party, Marcus Pretzell, blamed Mrs Merkel, linking the attack to her open-door migration policy.
Horst Seehofer, the leader of Mrs Merkel's sister party in Bavaria, urged the chancellor "to rethink our immigration and security policy and to change it".
A British witness, Mike Fox, told the Associated Press news agency that the 25-tonne lorry had missed him by only about three metres as it smashed through stands.
Politicians and members of the public have started paying tribute to the victims at the popular market
Australian Trisha O'Neill told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "I just saw this huge black truck speeding through the markets crushing so many people and then all the lights went out and everything was destroyed."
Monday's incident mirrored the lorry attack on Bastille Day crowds in the French city of Nice on 14 July, claimed by so-called Islamic State (IS).
At the end of 2014, a van was driven into pedestrians at a Christmas market in the French city of Nantes, injuring 10 people.
Last week, German prosecutors said a 12-year-old German-Iraqi boy was in custody on suspicion of plotting to blow up a Christmas market in the western town of Ludwigshafen.
Media caption"I saw people under the truck": Eyewitness Jan Hollitzer filmed the scene moments after the suspected attack
The prime suspect for the Berlin massacre was under covert surveillance for months as a possible terrorist threat until police let him slip through their grasp earlier this month.
Anis Amri, 24, a Tunisian asylum seeker who arrived in Germany last year, was investigated for “preparing a serious crime endangering national safety”, involving funding the purchase of automatic weapons for use in a terrorist attack.
Amri had been arrested earlier this year and was known to be a supporter of the terrorist group thought to be behind the Sousse terrorist attack in Tunisia, as well as being a suspected disciple of a notorious hate preacher.
He had multiple identity documents with six different aliases under three nationalities, and a criminal record in Italy and Tunisia. He spent four years in an Italian prison before travelling to Germany after an expulsion order expired.
The German authorities, who were on Wednesday facing serious questions about how Amri was still at large, tried to deport him in June, but because he had no valid papers proving his nationality he was allowed to stay.
In a further twist, Germany had asked Tunisia to issue a new passport for him so he could be deported, but the document only arrived on Wednesday – two days after the Christmas market attack that claimed 12 lives. It also emerged that the killer might have received hospital treatment for his injuries before slipping away.