http://nypost.com/2016/12/20/berlin-might-have-wrong-suspect-in-christmas-market-attack/
Berlin might have wrong suspect in Christmas market attack
By Yaron Steinbuch
December 20, 2016 | 7:54am | Updated
German authorities arrested the wrong man after a 7-ton truck plowed into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing a dozen people and injuring almost 50, and the killer is still on the loose, a Berlin police official said Tuesday.
“We have the wrong man,” an unnamed police source told Die Welt newspaper. “This means the situation is different. The real culprit is still armed and can commit further atrocities.”
The shocking announcement comes after the man they arrested denied any involvement in the terror attack when he was collared about 1½ miles from the scene.
He had not been named by authorities, but was described as a
23-year-old Pakistani refugee.
Berlin police tweeted a message urging people to be on the alert — and to provide eyewitness accounts, photos and video from the scene.
German intelligence sources earlier told CNN that the man arrived in Passau, a city on Germany’s border with Austria, on Dec. 31, 2015, after traveling through the Balkans.
He had a temporary residence permit since June 2016, Die Welt reported, citing a police source.
Authorities have had difficulty questioning him because he speaks Baluchi, a Pakistani dialect for which no translator had been found.
Chancellor
Angela Merkel said authorities believe the incident outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church near Berlin’s Zoo station was a terror attack.
“There is still a lot that we don’t know about this act with sufficient certainty,” Merkel told reporters. “But we must, as things stand, assume it was a terrorist attack.”
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said in a press conference Tuesday that 18 people were “very seriously injured” in the attack, The Guardian reported.
The man they arrested, who arrived in Berlin in February, did not have a record of terrorism, de Maizière said. Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper reported that he was known to police only for minor crimes.
His application for asylum had not been completed, The Guardian reported.
Die Welt reported that authorities raided a shelter for asylum-seekers at Berlin’s defunct Tempelhof airport overnight. Four men in their 20s were questioned but not arrested, The Telegraph reported.
Police declined to comment on the various reports, referring questions to federal prosecutors, who said they would hold a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
But Merkel, who has been assailed for allowing in large numbers of refugees, addressed head-on the possibility that an asylum-seeker was responsible for the bloodbath.
Among the dead was a man in the truck, who succumbed as medical personnel treated him, Berlin police spokesman Winfried Wenzel said. He was a Polish national, but police didn’t give further details of who he was or what happened to him.
The Polish owner of the truck said he feared the vehicle may have been hijacked.
Ariel Zurawski said he last spoke with the driver, his cousin, about noon, and the driver told him he was in Berlin and scheduled to unload Tuesday morning.
“They must have done something to my driver,” he told TVN24.
Germany has not so far experienced any mass-casualty attacks by Islamic jihadists, but has been increasingly wary since two attacks by asylum-seekers in the summer that were claimed by ISIS.
Five people were wounded in an ax rampage on a train near Wuerzburg and 15 in a bombing outside a bar in Ansbach, both in the southern state of Bavaria. Both attackers were killed.
Those attacks contributed to tensions in Germany over the arrival last year of 890,000 refugees.
Far-right groups and a nationalist party blamed Merkel for the mayhem.
“Under the cloak of helping people Merkel has completely surrendered our domestic security,” wrote Frauke Petry, co-chairwoman of the Alternative for Germany party.
The White House has condemned “what appears to have been a terrorist attack.” It came less than a month after the US State Department warned that extremist groups including Islamic State and al Qaeda were focusing “on the upcoming holiday season and associated events” in Europe.
The German government said Merkel spoke Tuesday with President Obama, who expressed his condolences.
ISIS and al Qaeda have both called on followers to use trucks in particular to launch attacks.
On July 14, a truck plowed into Bastille Day revelers in the southern French city of Nice, killing 86 people. ISIS claimed responsibility for that attack, which was carried out by a Tunisian living in France.
