The latest from Berlin: Last name, photo & more

anisamri The Daily Mail passes on the last name and photo (right) of the suspect identified by the authorities in the Berlin massacre. He is believed to be armed and dangerous. And, oh, yeah, he is probably a member of a “large” Islamic organization:

This is the Tunisian asylum seeker with ‘links to Islamic extremists’ who has become Europe’s most wanted man after his ID was found under the seat in the lorry used to massacre 12 people at a Berlin Christmas market.

Police today revealed they are hunting Anis Amri, 23, a refugee who came to Germany earlier this year. His paperwork was found in the truck’s footwell.

He is probably armed, ‘highly dangerous’ and a member of a ‘large’ Islamic organisation and has weapons training abroad, security sources say.

The suspect was also in contact with a ‘network of leading Islamist ideologists’.

This afternoon, police raided a migrant shelter in the town of Emmerich, western Germany, where he is believed to have lived.

Amri, who was born in the desert town of Tataouine in 1992 – a well-known ISIS stronghold close to the Libyan border – was apparently recently arrested for GBH but vanished before he could be charged.
In August 2016 he was arrested with a fake Italian passport and released but his phone was said to be monitored. He then disappeared in December, according to Die Welt.

A Facebook profile in his name shows ‘likes’ linked to Tunisian terror group Ansar al-Sharia, a Tunisian group with followers linked to extremists who murdered 22 at Tunis’ Bardo Museum in March 2015 and then 39 tourists at a beach resort in Sousse.

Germany’s state minister said the suspect’s asylum application had been rejected and that he appeared to have used different names.

Amri has temporary permission to stay in the country but was due to face an asylum hearing.

I find this almost unbelievable:

Despite an unfolding international manhunt the first pictures of him released in Germany have his eyes deliberately covered, thought to be because of strict privacy laws there. MailOnline has uncovered unblurred images.

We have some reason to hope that the suspect is not operating at full strength:

Police are believed to have found blood in the truck’s cab and now assume that the suspect may be badly injured.

Where did the hunt go wrong at the outset? The Daily Mail offers this:

The attacker was followed by a witness for a mile and a half – updating police on his mobile phone – but who is then said to have lost him in the city’s Tiergarten park.

On the basis of the description of the attacker given to police by the witness, officers pounced on Mr Baluch near the park’s victory column.

Police celebrated the swift arrest, with spokesman Winfrid Wenzel hailing the ‘civic courage’ of the witness. But relief later turned to helplessness as the authorities admitted they had been wasting their time with the Pakistani, whose DNA was not in the butcab.

The Daily Mail story has more current information and photographs, all of which is of interest. Indeed, the case of Anis Amri may offer a “teachable moment” or three for citizens of the United States.

STEVE adds: I’m a little skeptical of this story. His ID just happened to fall out of his pocket to the floor of the truck? It’s plausible that this happened in the struggle to kill the Polish driver of the truck, but it also sounds like exactly what you’d do to throw off the investigation if in fact this terrorist strike was part of large organizational effort. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out in a day or two that this “Amri” fellow has “slipped out” of Germany and is safely back in Syria or Iraq.

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