Tunisian Migrant Investigated for Suspected Terror Ties Is Sought in Berlin Truck Attack Revelation that authorities sought and failed to deport asylum seeker stokes criticism of Angela Merkel’s refugee policy By Anton Troianovski and Ruth Bender see note pleaser
http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-police-hunt-for-at-least-one-attacker-in-berlin-truck-crash-1482310790
OH PULEEZ! ASYLUM SEEKER??? JIHAD SEEKER IS MORE LIKE IT…..RSK
BERLIN—Anis Amri, a Tunisian migrant whom authorities previously investigated for suspected terror ties and tried to deport, became Germany’s most wanted man as the new prime suspect in the capital’s deadly truck attack.
The revelation that the asylum seeker had been able to remain in Germany despite efforts to expel him stoked a furor over what many politicians called dangerous gaps in the country’s immigration policy and escalated the political crisis facing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.
The federal police issued a rare international wanted notice for Mr. Amri—who arrived in Germany last year after time in an Italian prison—and offered a €100,000 ($104,000) reward, warning that he could be armed and dangerous.
Officials cautioned that they weren’t certain that Mr. Amri had, in fact, committed the crime and that it was possible someone else had planted the man’s residency permit in the truck. It was discovered in the cab of the semitrailer Tuesday, the day after it rammed into a Berlin Christmas market, leaving 12 dead and dozens injured. But, they said, the man was currently their No. 1 suspect.
Details emerging about Mr. Amri’s biography showed the case’s potential to boost critics who have argued that Ms. Merkel wasn’t taking Germans’ safety seriously enough in her open-door refugee policy. It also raised questions about the effectiveness of Germany’s security apparatus and, more broadly, Europe’s, particularly since the onset of the continent’s migration crisis.
On Wednesday, it appeared that critics’ predictions had come true: Despite German authorities’ earlier suspicions that the suspect had links to Islamist extremism, they said they had been unable to deport him because he lacked documentation proving he was from Tunisia. Officials said Germany finally received the new papers from Tunisian authorities on Wednesday—two days after the Christmas market attack.
“There is clearly a connection between the refugee crisis and the elevated terror danger in Germany,” conservative lawmaker Stephan Mayer said after a closed-door briefing in parliament on the investigation.
German officials said Wednesday afternoon that they were optimistic that the suspect would soon be caught. But as night fell, there was no word of his capture, and the federal police issued the international wanted notice—a step that typically faces high legal hurdles in Germany because of privacy concerns. One official said a leak about the suspect to some German news outlets in the morning might have helped him evade capture.
Authorities had missed a chance to launch their manhunt for Mr. Amri earlier. On Tuesday, prosecutors released an initial suspect detained just after Monday evening’s attack after determining he was the wrong man. The same day, investigators found the residency document for Mr. Amri after missing it in an earlier search of the truck’s cab, a German security official said.
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