Germany’s federal prosecutor said that several perpetrators may have been involved in an attack on a Berlin Christmas market, raising the prospect that one or more culprits are still at large.
Peter Frank, Germany’s chief federal prosecutor, echoed doubts voiced earlier by police that the suspect arrested for Monday’s attack was the man responsible. Speaking to reporters in Berlin, he said that while no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack that killed 12 people, “we have to assume that this has a terrorist background.”
“This is reminiscent of the attack in Nice,” he said. “Another reason is the prominent and symbolic target of a Christmas market and the modus operandi, which reflects previous calls to action by jihadist groups.”
Frank spoke after police in the German capital questioned a suspect arrested near the scene who they believed was the driver of the truck that rammed into a crowded market on a square in west Berlin. The individual, thought to be Pakistani, denied any involvement and the investigation by Germany’s federal prosecutor — who steps in on terror cases or other major crimes targeting state security — is ongoing, according to Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.
“It’s not yet certain whether this is really the driver,” city police chief Klaus Kandt told reporters in Berlin. Police remain “especially watchful” and urge the public to do the same, the force said in a Twitter post.
The prospect of one or more terrorist suspects still at large puts further pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel to do more to guarantee the German public’s security. In a nationally televised statement in Berlin earlier Tuesday, Merkel said that people across Germany were mourning after the “horrific and unimaginable” deaths and injuries sustained, and pledged to use the full force of German law to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The death toll after Monday’s attack stands at 12, with another 45 injured, 30 of them seriously, according to Frank.
German media including Bild newspaper initially reported that the suspect apprehended near the scene of the attack on Monday was a 23-year-old from Pakistan who had been registered as a refugee. Die Welt, citing people close to the authorities, later reported that police had since checked statements by the man and found it credible that he was not involved.
“This is a very difficult day,” Merkel said. “Like millions of people in Germany, I am horrified, shocked and deeply saddened by what happened yesterday evening on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz.”
Merkel’s open-door refugee policy of last year polarized voters and fed support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, known as the AfD. While the influx of asylum seekers has dropped off substantially this year, the Berlin deaths threaten to further undermine the chancellor’s domestic political standing going into an election year.
“Germany is no longer safe,” AfD co-chairwoman Frauke Petry said in an emailed statement. “We must be under no illusions. The breeding ground in which such acts can flourish has been negligently and systematically imported over the past year and a half.”
Leaders across the region are being buffeted by an unprecedented combination of Islamic terrorism and political violence whose origins are complex and to which there is no obvious answer. In western Europe, which holds a string of crucial elections next year, Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and other leaders are struggling to persuade the public that they can ensure security. Meanwhile, Monday’s assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey by a gunman pledging vengeance for the fall of Aleppo shows how the chaos in Syria is reaching into the heart of Turkey.
Even so, the attacks in Ankara and Berlin, plus a shooting in a mosque in Zurich, appeared to be “more coincidental than really connected,” said Blaise Misztal, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s national security program in Washington. “It’s going to feed into a temptation to weave a single narrative that this is Islamic terrorism coming out of Syria,” Misztal said in a phone interview. Yet this a “mistaken assessment,” as “it’s not a monolithic threat.”
Live television pictures showed Merkel, dressed all in black, laying flowers for the victims at the scene of the attack near the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church that was preserved as a monument to peace after being partially destroyed in World War II. She convening a meeting of her security cabinet earlier to discuss lessons from the incident, adding that there remains much “that we don’t know yet with the required certainty.”
The investigation will turn up “every detail — and we will prosecute as thoroughly as the law allows,” she said.
Featured Image: AP Photo
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