Video shows suspect making pledge to IS
CAIRO — The prime suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State extremist group, according to a video released just hours after he was shot dead by Italian police.
The Islamic State's semi-official Amaq agency released the video on Friday purportedly showing Anis Amri vowing to take revenge for Muslims killed in Western airstrikes.
Twelve people died in when a truck allegedly driven by Amri plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday evening. Fifty-three others were injured.
In the video, an Arabic-speaking man pledges allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and calls on Muslims in Europe to carry out attacks.
“My message to the crusaders: We've come to slaughter you, pigs. The blood of monotheists (Muslims) will not go to waste,” he says. Amaq gives the speaker the jihadist nom de guerre Abu Bara al-Tunisia, meaning he is a Tunisian native, like Amri.
The video's release came shortly after Amri was killed in a shootout in the northern outskirts of Milan. Police had stopped him during a routine patrol at around 3 a.m. on Friday in Sesto San Giovanni.
When an officer asked for his documents, Amri pulled out a gun and shot him. He was killed when another officer fired back, Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel thanked the Italian authorities for shooting Amri.
“We feel the solidarity of our friends around the world, and they should know how much we also mourn for their victims,” Merkel said at a press conference. An Italian and an Israeli national have been confirmed as among the dead.
Merkel, whom critics blame for creating a security threat by keeping German borders open for refugees, said the attack raised questions about German law enforcement and that her government would investigate to what extent political and legal changes needed to be made in the wake of the attack.
Now that Amri is dead, the probe turns to whether the failed asylum seeker — who had been under investigation by German authorities as a potential terrorist — had accomplices or a support network, Germany's top prosecutor Peter Frank said.
Holger Muench, the head of Germany's federal criminal police, linked Amri to radical Islamist preacher Abu Walaa, but did not provide details on how the two are connected.
Abu Walaa is the suspected head of a group that recruited for and provided financial and logistical support to extremist Islamic State in Germany. He was arrested in Germany in November.
Italian authorities identified Amri by matching his fingerprints to those found on the truck, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.
German investigators are also trying to determine whether the gun in his possession in Milan was the same weapon used to kill the Polish driver of the hijacked truck, and how Amri managed to evade police for days and escape unnoticed to Italy.
Italy's Corriere della Sera paper reported that police officers found a ticket for a train from Chambery, in south-eastern France, arriving in Milan at 1 a.m. — just two hours before he was shot dead.
Italy's ANSA news agency reported that Amri had travel tickets that indicated he had passed through France's Chambery before heading to Turin in the Italian region of Piedmont.
A French official refused to confirm whether Amri had traveled to Italy via France, calling for “great caution” against jumping to conclusions.
