Attack on the Berlin Christmas market at the Memorial Church

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Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz the morning after the attack

During the attack on the Berlin Christmas market at the Gedächtniskirche , the Islamist terrorist Anis Amri drove a tractor-trailer into a crowd on December 19, 2016 at around 8 p.m. at the Christmas market at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church , which took place on Breitscheidplatz in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg . He had previously shot the Polish driver of the tractor-trailer and robbed the vehicle. As a result of the collision with the truck, eleven visitors to the Christmas market died and another 55 visitors were injured. The twelfth fatality was the truck driver of the truck.

The assassin was initially able to escape. It was only two days after the fact by the attorney general as strongly suspect for investigation advertised. The 24-year-old Amri was shot dead by a police patrol on December 23, 2016 during a routine check in Sesto San Giovanni, Italy . The terrorist militia " Islamic State " (IS) spread on their website on 20 December 2016 message, the perpetrator had acted as a "soldier of the Islamic State".

Amri was classified as a hazard in November 2015 according to information. An investigative committee of the Bundestag has been investigating the errors of the responsible authorities before and after the attack since March 2018.

Sequence of events

Route of the articulated lorry during the stop
Location of the attack in Berlin (route of the tractor-trailer through the Christmas market and end position indicated)

The driver of a Polish haulage company near Stettin had transported the Scania R 450 tractor unit with trailer , loaded with 25 tons of structural steel, from Italy to Berlin. In Berlin, the driver was waiting for the unloading at ThyssenKrupp Schulte on Friedrich-Krause-Ufer . The truck's GPS data showed the first maneuvering trips at 3:45 p.m., which were later interpreted by the Polish freight forwarder as practice drives on the truck by a person who is not familiar with it.

From about this point on, the truck driver could no longer be reached by phone. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, the forwarding driver was shot dead by the assassin in the truck's parking lot while sitting in the passenger seat.

After the perpetrator had taken the truck, he circled the Christmas market and chatted with fellow believers from Berlin and the Ruhr area . Among other things, he sent a selfie from the driver's cab of the truck and the text “My brother, everything is okay, God willing. I'm in the car now, my brother pray for me, pray for me. ”At around 8 p.m., the assassin drove the tractor-trailer from Hardenbergstrasse into the entrance to the Christmas market at the Memorial Church on Breitscheidplatz. From there it drove about 70 to 80 meters across the market through the crowd, destroyed several stalls and came to a stop on the east lane of the Budapester Straße, which touched the square . According to the results of the investigation, the truck's automatic emergency braking system was triggered by the impact on the first huts . As a result, the truck stopped after 70 to 80 meters, which saved many people's lives.

A witness said two men were sitting in the driver's cab. The co-driver grabbed the driver's steering wheel and steered the truck to the left, which prevented worse things from happening.

Several witnesses saw an assassin get out of the truck. The Berlin police received the first reports at 8:02 p.m. One witness stated that he had followed the driver to the Victory Column , but in between he had lost sight of him. During his persecution, he continually notified the police, who finally arrested the persecuted man at the Victory Column. The press reported that the witness had "directed the police to the target", giving the false impression that the arrested person was the assassin.

The Polish haulier of the truck was found shot in the passenger seat after the attack and was identified by the owner of the haulage company the day after the attack.

  • After the attack

  • The tractor-trailer, surrounded by rescue workers

  • Camera teams and journalists on site

  • Flowers in memory of the victims

  • The damaged cab of the tractor unit

  • Hardenbergstrasse the next morning; Street leads directly to the Christmas market

  • The morning of the reopening, December 22nd

Investigations

Advice and observation in advance of the act

After the fact, it became known that the Moroccan secret service Mudīriyyat Murāqabat at-Turāb al-Waṭanī (Direction générale de la surveillance du territoire, DGST) disrupted the German secret service ( Bundesnachrichtendienst , BND) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) on September 19 and 11 October 2016 had warned of the later assassin Anis Amri . The announcement said that Amri had contacts with the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group and was ready to carry out a terrorist attack. On December 23, 2016, the Moroccan Embassy in Berlin confirmed that it had issued two warnings. The Moroccan secret service had also warned of the attack in Nice on July 14, 2016.

The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia , Ralf Jäger , explained that the temporary observation of Amri had given him the impression that he was moving away from jihadism and Salafism in order to deal with general crime typical of the drug environment. That is why they saw no way of arresting him.

The evaluation of the communication data from the perpetrator's cell phones revealed that he had been in contact with an IS contact before the crime. Apparently he wanted to leave for IS, but was urged by the IS man to carry out the attack instead. On November 10, 2016, he received an ISIS document titled The Good News for guidance to those performing martyrdom operations . Furthermore, it was determined via the location function of one of the mobile phones that Amri had been to the Christmas market seven times before the crime.

Arrest of a bystander

On the basis of testimonies about the perpetrator's appearance and escape route, a Pakistani asylum seeker was arrested near the Berlin Victory Column about an hour after the attack . The suspect denied the act. Since no indications of involvement were found, the BKA and the General Public Prosecutor's Office announced on the afternoon of December 20 that the arrested person was not the perpetrator. He was released on the evening of December 20th. He later said he was blindfolded and undressed after his arrest. He resisted, was beaten by the officers and had to sleep on a wooden bed without a mattress with his hands bandaged behind his back. Because the interpreter did not speak his mother tongue, Baluch , there were major difficulties in understanding. On the charge, he stated that he did not have a driver's license and could not even start a vehicle. The Berlin police sharply rejected the mistreatment allegations.

Searching for clues in the truck and establishing the identity of the attacker

The chief detective responsible for securing evidence at the scene of the crime later testified in the Bundestag investigation committee that the truck had not been secured until it arrived at Breitscheidplatz at 11 p.m. after the murdered Polish driver had been rescued by several officials. He then arranged for it to be towed to the Julius Leber barracks in Berlin to secure evidence. However, the removal was delayed, which is why the truck did not arrive until December 20, 2016 around 2.30 p.m. Around 4.30 p.m., the identity of the assassin could be established after investigators found Amris' wallet in the footwell of the driver's cab , with his certificate of registration as an asylum seeker and the certificate of tolerance of the Tunisian citizen Anis Amri issued by the Kleve district . An Amris cell phone was also found on the floor of the driver's cab. A second cell phone Amris, with which he had called his mentor from IS while driving to the attack site , was found in the grille of the truck, without being able to explain how it got there to this day. The Europe-wide search for Amri was not triggered until after midnight on December 21, 2016. Investigators also found fingerprints on the driver's door of the truck that could be attributed to Amri. On the afternoon of December 21, 2016, Ralf Jäger , Minister of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, stated that the fact that Amri's ID had been found in the crime truck did not mean that he was also involved in the crime.

Search and death of the assassin

Nationwide wanted poster for Anis Amri

Under the erroneous assumption that the Pakistani had already caught the assassin, Berlin security forces did not, as provided for in a concept for Islamist attacks, visit all Islamist threats in Berlin at the known whereabouts. Amri was able to run through the city with his handgun to his apartment on Freienwalder Strasse for almost an hour and a half, change his clothes, pack his backpack and leave Berlin by public transport.

According to a wanted report, he also used the false identities Ahmed Zaghloul, Ahmad Zarzour, Ahmed Almasri and Mohamed Hassa.

In the meantime Amri had traveled , largely by public transport , from Berlin via the Netherlands ( Nijmegen ) and France ( Lyon and Chambéry ) to Italy ( Turin and Milan ). On December 23, Amri was around 3 am during a routine check in the metropolitan city of Milan belonging city Sesto San Giovanni shot by Italian police after he opened in this fire.

Three and a half weeks after the attack, Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas admitted that the authorities had dealt with Amri. In the ZDF broadcast Maybrit Illner, he announced the publication of a report that was supposed to describe very precisely what the authorities involved did in the Amri case and how they decided.

In fact, on October 12, 2017, the special investigator appointed by the Berlin Senate and former federal prosecutor Bruno Jost listed numerous errors and legal violations by the police authorities in his final report.

Letter of responsibility and video

On December 19, an IS group reported the attack on the Telegram news service . The IS news channel Amaq reported on December 20 that the assassin had acted as a "soldier of the Islamic State". However, the confessional text did not contain any knowledge of the perpetrators , so that it was initially not certain that the IS was actually involved in the planning and implementation of the attack. In April 2017, however, indications came to the public that the attacker was apparently controlled from the management level of the IS. Previously, the attack of a " lone wolf " was assumed. The IS propaganda magazine Rumiyah published detailed instructions for an attack with a truck in November 2016.

On December 23, Amaq published a video in which Anis Amri swore allegiance to the terrorist chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi . He is standing on the Kiel Bridge at the north port in Berlin-Moabit ; This is located between Friedrich-Krause-Ufer , where Amri took control of the truck, and the mosque association on Perleberger Strasse , where he regularly drove. Since deciduous trees with green leaves can be seen in the background, it is believed that the video was recorded weeks before the crime.

Speculation about the intervention of the haulier

The haulier of the truck, the Polish citizen Łukasz U., was apparently brought into his power by the perpetrator at around 3:45 p.m. on the day of the event and then shot. Since the tabloid media had speculated - for six days without sufficient information and ignorance of an autonomous truck emergency braking system that had been in use since 2005 - that the haulage driver intervened in the rampage, signatures were initially collected in an online petition for the award of the Federal Cross of Merit. For the survivors of the truck driver, the British truck driver Dave Duncan raised 170,000  British pounds (around 200,000 euros) through crowdfunding .

Impairments in the preliminary investigation

In May 2017 it became known that the Berlin State Criminal Police Office (LKA) had findings in autumn 2016 that Amri was engaged in "commercial, gang-like trade in narcotics " which, according to Interior Senator Andreas Geisel, would have been enough to arrest Amri. LKA employees apparently wanted to cover up this by backdated a document from January 2017 to November 2016 in which only small amounts of drugs are reported. The employees were investigated on suspicion of forging documents . The investigations were discontinued in 2018 due to a lack of sufficient suspicion. The special investigator Bruno Jost confirmed the allegations of file manipulation in June 2017. He assumes that another official was involved in the manipulation. Furthermore, the "technical supervision [the management of the commissariat 541] would have completely or partially failed".

An internal follow-up report published in December 2017 shows that the police had an improved concept for counter-terrorism operations. The "management model for emergency situations" commissioned in 2013 was presented to the police chief in July 2015, but was not applied. Thus the officers who arrived at the scene of the attack acted “largely intuitively”.

In addition, German authorities had cell phone chats from Amri with several telephone numbers in Libya in February 2016, in which an IS member gave advice for a “wedding”, a code word for an assassination attempt, and a “Douqma”, Persian for the push button on the explosive device. The USA bombed an IS position in Libya on the night of January 18-19, 2017, killing 80 fighters. According to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter , the air strike was also directed against those responsible for terrorist attacks in Europe. It is unclear whether among those killed there were suspects with connections to the Berlin attack or chat contacts from Amri. On May 22, 2017, the member of the Bundestag Hans-Christian Ströbele suspected that Amri had not been arrested at the request of the US authorities, despite the chats, in order not to hinder the preparation of the military operation in Libya. The author Stefan Schubert also took up this thesis in 2018.

After Bilel Ben Ammar , a Tunisian friend of Amri, who had announced in 2015 to join the Islamic State Connect (IS) to want and who was suspected as an assistant after the attack, which has federal police in 2016 gefahndet. This search was stopped again on November 26, 2016 on the instructions of the Islamism department of the Berlin State Criminal Police Office.

Speculation about the person of Bilel Ben Ammar

On February 22, 2019, the news portal Focus Online claimed that the Amri contact Bilel Ben Ammar (born September 4, 1990 in Tunis ) , who was deported on February 1, 2017, was an agent of the Moroccan secret service DGST ( French : Direktion Générale de la Surveillance du Territoire ) has been. The service had warned the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Intelligence Service several times against the radicalization of Amri and his attack plans. Bilel Ben Ammar met the later terrorist Amri in Berlin the day before the attack. Ammar was also present at the scene of the attack. This shows a surveillance video that is kept under lock and key. On this one can see how a “person with the appearance of Ben Ammar hits a man on the side of the head with a square timber to clear the way for the fleeing Amri”. The man who was hit, Sascha H., is still in a coma . Two hours after the attack, Ammar also took photos of the destroyed Christmas market and sent them to a previously unidentified number. Nine days after the attack, the political decision was made to deport Ammar. In an email dated December 28, 2016 to the Federal Police, which was available to the news portal, it said: “The security authorities and the Federal Ministry of the Interior have a considerable interest in the deportation being successful.” Ammar was then arrested the next day and was flown to Tunisia on February 1, 2017. In December 2017, the FDP member of the Berlin investigative committee, Marcel Luthe , criticized Ben Ammar for having been deported so that he would not be available as a witness for the investigators and investigative committee. According to the same report, an investigator from the Federal Criminal Police Office who wanted to remain anonymous also criticized Ben Ammar's deportation.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior rejected the focus after an internal investigation. Ammar had been deported because he was "a dangerous person" and his detention could soon no longer be maintained. The authorities are not aware of any secret service activities by Ammar. Just as little as the news magazine claims there is a video that proves that the Islamist was involved in the attack. The Tagesschau website also described the Focus report as “probably wrong”. The statement that the authorities had protected a terrorist from criminal prosecution was received with indignation within the security authorities. There is a surveillance video from a high-rise building, but the image quality is poor. The recordings had already been shown in the program Contrasts and were shown to victim lawyers.

After a renewed evaluation, an official of the BKA confirmed on September 26, 2019 before the investigative committee of the Bundestag that the first aider Sascha H. had been identified on the surveillance video during a "physical / verbal argument" with strangers.

Victim

Origin and number

The twelve fatalities are Anna and Georgiy Bagratuni, Sebastian Berlin, Nada Cizmar, Fabrizia Di Lorenzo, Dalia Elyakim, Christoph Herrlich, Klaus Jacob, Angelika Klösters, Dorit Krebs, Lukasz Urban and Peter Völker. Six of them came from Germany, two from Ukraine and one each from Israel , Italy , Poland and the Czech Republic .

In addition, 55 people of different nationalities were injured, some seriously. The events also had consequences for many emergency services: Of the total of around 390 police officers and 154 fire fighters who were on duty at Breitscheidplatz, 28 police officers and 64 fire fighters reported emotional trauma to their respective employers .

Compensation

The Victims Compensation Act (OEG), according to which victims or their surviving relatives can apply for pensions paid by the federal and state governments, does not apply to the victims at the Christmas market, with the exception of the Polish haulage driver, because according to Section 1 (11) OEG, physical injuries Attacks by motor vehicles and trailers in the OEG are expressly excluded. In these cases, applications can be made to traffic victim assistance. From the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS) it was said: “If the demarcation regulation results in disadvantages for those affected in view of the events in Berlin, the BMAS [...] will examine whether changes need to be made in the planned legislative project . “Nine months after the attack, 1.54 million euros were paid out to 119 victims and their bereaved; ten compensation cases were still pending. A year after the attack, around two million euros were paid out. Two years after the attack, around 3.8 million euros had been paid out.

Commemoration

The Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière (CDU) ordered mourning flags to be displayed in all federal authorities for December 20 .

The day after the attack, a funeral service took place in the Memorial Church, in which many politicians, including Federal President Joachim Gauck and Chancellor Angela Merkel , took part. According to their own statements, relatives of the victims were prevented from attending the funeral service on the grounds that high-profile politicians were sitting in the church. Unlike after the attack in Munich in 2016 , the MPs and members of the government did not come together for a state ceremony or a memorial service for the victims. Relatives and the press criticized the lack of public memorial services for the victims and the confidentiality of their identities .

On the night of December 20, 2016, the Brandenburg Gate was illuminated in the colors of the Berlin state flag and the German national colors. Most of the several dozen Christmas markets in Berlin remained closed for reasons of piety the day after the attack . The Berlin and Brandenburg radio stations held a minute's silence from 6 p.m. on that day , during which the church bells of the memorial service were broadcast or silence could be heard.

President Sergio Mattarella and other political representatives attended the funeral of the Italian attack victim Fabrizia D. in Sulmona . The murdered Polish truck driver Lukasz U. was buried on December 30, 2016 in Banie in the presence of the Polish President Andrzej Duda and other politicians. A truck convoy gave him the last escort .

At the invitation of Bundestag President Norbert Lammert , the victims of the attack were commemorated on January 19, 2017 in the Bundestag in the presence of the then incumbent Federal President Joachim Gauck. On January 21, 2017, the Office of the Federal President announced that Gauck had invited the next of kin of the twelve dead to his official residence . The meeting should take place non-publicly and confidentially.

In December 2017, there was criticism of Angela Merkel's treatment of the bereaved, who accused Merkel in an open letter of inaction and political failure . Kurt Beck , Federal Government Commissioner for the victims and survivors of the attack, expressed some understanding for this. On December 18, there was a meeting between Merkel and relatives, and the Bundestag decided on higher financial compensation and central contact points at federal and state level for victims of terrorism and their relatives.

Unlike his widow, the parents of the murdered Polish truck driver did not take part in the meeting. In a conversation with Deutsche Welle, the mother raised serious allegations: "I would like to tell Ms. Merkel that she has my son's blood on her hands." To this day, the family has been waiting for a signal from the federal government like a letter of condolence. The behavior of the German authorities was disrespectful and no one had apologized.

At the commemoration to mark the anniversary of the attack on December 19, 2017, a memorial was opened: a gold-colored "crack" that stretches 17 meters above Breitscheidplatz, from Budapester Strasse up the stairs to the church plateau. The names of the dead are set in the risers of the stairs by Egon Eiermann . The last part of the crack was symbolically closed by victims and relatives on the opening day. According to the design office mm + , which designed the memorial site, the crack, made of a bronze alloy with a gold component , is intended to symbolize the wound left by the attack, but also the crack that passed through society. By filling the crack, which the blacksmith Michael Hammers made, the possibility of healing should be pointed out, analogous to the Kintsugi technique .

After the memorial service for the attack, there was criticism of the participation of Imam Mohamed Matar, who spoke at the ceremony. Matar works for the Neukölln meeting place observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution . The American Jewish Committee was outraged that it was cynical that a representative from this mosque of all people spoke at the ceremony.

Reactions

National

The then Federal President Joachim Gauck said: “This is a bad evening for Berlin and our country.” Chancellor Angela Merkel ( CDU ) declared that “we […] have to assume a terrorist attack as things stand.” She added: “The The deed will be cleared up - in every detail. And she will be punished as harshly as our laws require. "On the assumption that the perpetrator was a refugee, she said:" I know that it would be particularly difficult for all of us to endure if it were confirmed that a person was this Committed an act that asked for protection and asylum in Germany. This would be particularly repugnant to the many, many Germans who are involved in refugee aid every day, and to the many people who actually need our protection and who are trying to integrate into our country. "

The former Vice-Head of the Federal Intelligence Service , Rudolf Adam , criticized the magazine Cicero on December 21, 2016 : "Although every citizen is looking for orientation, self-assurance and confidence, the Chancellor offers only empty phrases instead of answers". The press council had received 14 complaints about the reporting by Wednesday, December 21st. These were primarily directed against the unpixeled representation of the killed truck driver. The Bild newspaper was accused of carrying the headline fear! writing past reality, neglecting grief and stirring up fear. The editor-in-chief at the time, Tanit Koch, replied that they were depicting the realities of life and not doing educational journalism.

The world -Herausgeber Stefan Aust commented one year after the attack:

“The Odyssey of Anis Amri also shows that Islamist terrorists could and can move like 'fish in water', especially young men without personal papers from the Middle East and North Africa who are considered“ refugees ”under the humanitarian rainbow "Refugees Welcome" poured into the country and kept flowing. "

Discussion about public safety

Public officials

  • The Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU Chairman Horst Seehofer said immediately after the attack: "We owe it to the victims, those affected and the entire population that we rethink and readjust our entire immigration and security policy." The Greens and journalists like Miguel Sanchez are of the opinion that Seehofer has made himself vulnerable because his statement is premature, unencumbered by facts and disrespectful. In the opinion of the Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU), one should always let the investigative authorities do their work first. The German Police Union , the Saarland Interior Minister Klaus Bouillon and CDU interior politician Wolfgang Bosbach had already come to the CSU with substantive proposals for improving security and / or refugee policy.
  • The Bavarian State Minister of the Interior Joachim Herrmann said: “We have to check the whole system again to see how it can be that there are still people in the country for whom it is not clear where they come from, how old they are. Obviously there are deficits in the process ”.
  • The Berlin Archbishop Heiner Koch said that “a message and a culture were met”. He described the immediate call for political consequences and blame as unbearable. "The crib is empty," says Koch, "we too can only try to endure the emptiness, the questions, the unresolved and stay with the powerless."
  • The Protestant regional bishop of Saxony , Carsten Rentzing , was a native of Berlin and said with reference to anti-asylum protests by Pegida and other right-wing populists that it would be inappropriate to call for consequences as long as the dead are not yet buried. This is "the first major attack that we had to experience. We can only hope and pray that it will be the last for the foreseeable future ”.
  • The chairman of the Conference of Interior Ministers, Klaus Bouillon (CDU), stated on December 19 that it was in a state of war, while the Interior Ministers announced that all Christmas markets should remain open.
  • As a consequence of the terrorist attack, the FDP federal chairman Christian Lindner called for an investigative committee of the Bundestag : “The failure of the security authorities is reminiscent of the case of the right-wing extremist terror network NSU . I have no confidence in an investigation that comes solely from the interior ministers de Maizière and Jäger. "
  • Sahra Wagenknecht , leader of the Left Party in the German Bundestag , gave Angela Merkel joint responsibility for the attack: “There is joint responsibility, but it is more complex. In addition to the uncontrolled opening of the border, there is the broken-down police force, which is neither staffed nor technically equipped to suit the threat situation. ”Foreign policy is just as fatal,“ the oil wars supported by Merkel in the USA and her allies, the Islamic State 'first owes its existence and strength ”.
  • The 41st German Defense Lawyers' Day in Bremen on March 26, 2017 argued for its Bremen declaration on the demand for reform of the murder paragraph also with the fact that in the case of the Berlin Christmas market attack , it was not the criminal law but the law enforcement that would have failed.

Security experts

  • According to the director of the Institute for Security Policy at the University of Kiel , Joachim Krause , an act of terror in the style of the Nice attack had to be expected, especially since the IS militia recommended this attack model in particular. Detailed instructions for such an attack were published in the IS propaganda magazine Rumiyah in November. In Germany it has so far been neglected, pedestrian zones and public spaces by bollards or the like. to secure, as has long been the practice in Israel . In addition, video cameras are required in public places in order to clear up attacks. According to the deputy chairman of the Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter Ulf Küch, with the influx of refugees , unstable personalities “in an end-of-time mood” have come to Germany. These people have to be looked after better and more intensively and, above all, given meaningful employment.
  • The chairman of the Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter André Schulz criticized the "state of war" utterance by Klaus Bouillon and stated that first and foremost the existing laws must be applied consistently, but for which there is currently a lack of staff. The gap cannot be closed in the short term either, because suitable qualification of new employees cannot take place overnight. In addition, there are technical and legal blind spots in the monitoring of communication between threats, which make effective monitoring impossible. He described the lack of border controls as a security risk due to globalization, which is why not even a minimum level of protection can be guaranteed. Immigration needs to be better controlled.

Journalists

Heribert Prantl , member of the editor-in-chief and head of the domestic affairs department of the Süddeutsche Zeitung , pointed out that immigration authorities, criminal prosecutors and judiciary Anis Amri, who had sought weapons and violated laws under the eyes of the secret services and the police, would have no problems in Can take detention. They could have imposed the most stringent reporting and residence requirements on him “to ward off a particular danger to security” and, if they violated them, “could have taken him into custody and obtained the papers for deportation while he was in custody”. But they didn't. According to Prantl, this suggests that the authorities acted deliberately. “Did the authorities accept the Amri risk because they hoped his surveillance would provide information? And did the supervising authority not tell other authorities anything because they wanted to have the findings for themselves? ”Wrote Prantl in his comment.

Survey

  • In a survey carried out by TNS Emnid for Bild am Sonntag on the occasion of the attack on the Berlin Christmas market at the Gedächtniskirche, 11% of those questioned stated that they used the attack as an opportunity to avoid public events, 5% would like to attend these even more, 84 % see no reason for a change in behavior. 83% of those questioned were in favor of expanding video surveillance in public places, 15% were against it. 68% agreed to Seehofer's demand to readjust immigration and security policy, 30% rejected this.
  • In a survey carried out by YouGov for DPA, 73% were in favor of increasing the police force, 61% in favor of better police equipment and 60% in favor of more video surveillance of public spaces.
  • In a survey carried out by Forsa for Stern magazine , 28% of those questioned said “Chancellor Merkel's refugee policy” was partly responsible for the attacks, while 68% saw no direct connection. However, 76% were of the opinion that the threat of terrorism and the security situation in Germany will play an important role in the next federal election campaign.

Security measures after the attack

Christmas market under the television tower with concrete barriers, December 26, 2016

Christmas markets throughout Germany and Austria were secured by structural measures and concrete bollards. Depending on the state and location, roadblocks were also decided and security concepts revised for the following New Year's Eve celebration .

watch TV

The first broadcast of the television film Sturm from the Tatort series was originally planned for January 1, 2017. However, due to content parallels to the attack, it was removed from the program and the broadcast was postponed to April 17, 2017.

Others

  • On Friedrich-Krause-Ufer, right next to the Thyssen-Krupp-Schulte company premises, where the truck was stolen, is Berlin's central reception and service center for asylum seekers , where Amri found himself under a false identity when he arrived in the city in 2015 registered.
  • According to media reports, the later crime vehicle was loaded in the metropolitan city of Milan before leaving for Germany . The loading location was just under two kilometers from the Sesto San Giovanni train station, where Italian police shot Anis Amri on December 23, 2016.
  • The UApod.berlin podcast is a special form of media reporting . The graphic designer Stella Schiffczyk and the journalist Daniel Lücking observe the committee of inquiry every day. A discussion in the form of a podcast episode is published for each day of the meeting.
  • Three years after the attack, two suspicious men set off a terrorist alert on December 21, 2019. The Christmas market was cleared and searched by around 250 police officers. The suspicion of a possible renewed terrorist attack was not confirmed.

Web links

Commons : Attack on the Berlin Christmas market at the Memorial Church  - collection of images
 Wikinews: Berlin: Articulated truck drives into Christmas market - 12 dead, 48 injured  - message

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Italians and Israelis are among the dead in the attack. In: rbb-online.de. December 22, 2016. Retrieved December 22, 2016 .
  2. ↑ IS claims the stop for itself. In: Spiegel Online . Retrieved December 22, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b Truck races into Christmas market - police assume premeditation. In: Spiegel Online . December 20, 2016, accessed December 20, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Suspected contact Amris arrested . In: derStandard.at . December 28, 2016, accessed December 30, 2016.
  5. ↑ 14 of the injured were still in mortal danger on December 22, 2016. De Maizière confirms: traces of Anis Amri found on the attack truck. In: FAZ.net . December 22, 2016. Retrieved December 22, 2016 .
  6. ↑ dpa: After the terrorist attack, 20 people were injured in Berlin clinics. In: FAZ.net . December 28, 2016. Retrieved December 29, 2016 .
  7. ^ Public investigation, generalbundesanwalt.de
  8. ^ A b Julius Müller-Meiningen: Italy celebrates the heroes of Milan . In: RP.online , December 23, 2016.
  9. ^ A b Press release from the Italian Ministry of the Interior
  10. ↑ a b IS claims attack on Christmas market for itself. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . December 20, 2016, accessed December 20, 2016 .
  11. ↑ tagesschau.de: Amri, the informant and a serious accusation. In: tagesschau.de. November 15, 2019, accessed November 20, 2019 .
  12. ^ The last hours of Łukasz U. In: Spiegel Online . December 21, 2016, accessed December 23, 2016 .
  13. ↑ a b Live ticker on the Berlin Christmas market . n-tv.de.
  14. ^ A b Thomas Dudek, Philip Faigle: The way of the truck. In: Zeit Online . December 20, 2016, accessed December 23, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Uwe Müller, Jörg Winterbauer, Martin Lutz: Was the Polish driver's over-punctuality fatal? In: WeltN24 . December 20, 2016, accessed December 20, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Lukasz Urban: Is the Polish truck driver a hero? In: HNA . December 21, 2016, accessed December 21, 2016 .
  17. ↑ Stephanie Kirchgaessner: Police pore over Polish truck driver's final hours for clues to Berlin attack. Details unfold about Łukasz Urban who was apparently stabbed and shot to death before his truck was driven into a market. In: theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media Ltd., December 20, 2016, accessed December 21, 2016 .
  18. ↑ Tak wyglądały ostatnie godziny życia polskiego kierowcy ('This is what the last hours of the Polish driver's life looked like'). In: Televizja Republika .20. December 2016.
  19. ↑ Attack in Berlin: Amri is said to have posed in front of the surveillance camera after the attack. In: zeit.de . January 4, 2017, accessed January 4, 2017 .
  20. ↑ "I'm in the car now, pray for myself" . In: The world . December 29, 2016.
  21. ↑ Security - Amri Manhunt - Facts . ( Memento from December 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: BKA.de , accessed on December 22, 2016
  22. ↑ The truck races into the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz . In: Berliner Zeitung . 19th December 2016.
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  33. ^ Nicolas Beau: Attentat de Berlin, les Marocains avaient prévenu le BND allemand . In: Mondafrique , December 22, 2016, accessed on December 23, 2016 (French).
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  37. ^ Attentat de Berlin: le Maroc avait averti l'Allemagne le 19 septembre et le 11 octobre. In: lejardinauxetoiles.net , December 28, 2016.
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Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 18.7 ″  N , 13 ° 20 ′ 4 ″  E