Author doubts perpetrator theory: Was Amri really behind the wheel?

Five years ago, on December 19, 2016, a terrorist drove a truck into the Christmas market on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz. Thirteen people were killed: eleven visitors to the Christmas market, the Polish truck driver whose car was used in the attack, and another man who died last October as a result of serious injuries.

Four days after the attack, the Tunisian Anis Amri, who had come to Italy in 2011 and Germany in 2015, was shot near Milan. Amri, who was listed as a “threat” even before the crime, is the perpetrator for the authorities. However, investigators made a number of mistakes related to the attack. Not least because of this, both the Berlin House of Representatives and the German Bundestag set up committees of inquiry to investigate the attack.

That was only partially successful, and there are still many unanswered questions. After the work of the Bundestag committee, the opposition at the time summed up that the federal government had not kept its promise to investigate the attack, the Federal Criminal Police Office ignored information that Amri was not an individual perpetrator and the intelligence services were able to prevent the attack. Journalist and author Thomas Moser thinks it was even worse. Amri did not drive the truck and was only “part of the perpetrator group”.

ntv.de: Mr. Moser, you have written a book about the “Amri complex”. Assume that Anis Amri did the attack on Breitscheidplatz not committed or that he committed him probably not has committed?

Thomas Moser: The nationwide narrative is that Anis Amri committed the attack, alone, as a lone perpetrator. I say: This narrative, which is borne by the media and politicians who cannot judge it, is not true. There is much evidence against Amri’s primary culpability. Anis Amri probably did not commit the attack.

What are your clues?

I rely on the location of the evidence, on witness observations and on other investigative findings from the documents of the Federal Criminal Police Office. Looking at the location of the tracks, it is simply the case that Amri’s fingerprints were not found on the immovable parts in the truck. There were also no reliable traces of DNA that would point to Amri in the driver’s cab, …

… but only on the outside, on the driver’s door.

DNA traces of another, unidentified person were found in the driver’s cab. And a cell phone, an old Samsung brand clamshell phone that Amri used to talk to his family on the phone. In this cell phone, which was called “bones” by BKA technicians, there was no SIM card. So it wasn’t internet-enabled, you couldn’t make phone calls with it. It didn’t matter – except to point out Amri as the perpetrator. This cell phone was covered with glass dust, which indicates that it must have been in the truck at the time of the crime.

Another cell phone was found next to the “bone”.

Yes, an HTC brand phone that came with a SIM card. This cell phone was not in the driver’s cab, however, but was stuck in a hole in the front of the truck. It could not have got there as a result of the impact. It must have been placed there from the outside.

In the grille?

The radiator grille was also part of the debate, and there are two or three different places in the files. I saw a photo of the cell phone stuck in the cracked bumper. One of the crime scene investigators told the investigative committee of the Berlin House of Representatives that the cell phone was in the very back of the hole in the right headlight that had fallen out. Another indication is the wallet.

That was also in the driver’s cab …

… and unlike the Samsung cell phone, it was not covered with glass dust. It was under a cloth blanket. But one of the first witnesses to look into the truck after the attack cannot remember the ceiling. In his opinion there was no ceiling there.

What was in the wallet?

A monthly ticket from the BVG, i.e. the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, 230 euros, with Amri’s thumbprint only on one of the banknotes, plus a certificate of tolerance from the immigration office in Kleve, issued to an Ahmed Almasri – one of the aliases of Anis Amri. There was also a picture of a girl in the wallet who has not been identified.

There is another problematic point.

Which one is it?

There are two denials from Amri that are being investigated by the federal prosecutor’s office. Amri is said to have told another Islamist from the Berlin Fussilet Mosque that he was not involved in the attack, that he was wrongly accused and that he handed over the certificate of tolerance to the Berlin police months ago. He also sent a WhatsApp message saying he would “never do anything like that”.

Why is that important?

The investigators interpreted Amri’s wallet and his cell phones at the scene of the crime as deliberately left marks of identification of the crime. Why should Amri deny his act later if he wanted to be identified as the perpetrator beforehand?

In the special vote of the FDP, the Left and the Greens in the final report of the Bundestag committee, there were numerous indications that Amri “did not act alone in the attack, but had support in the act”. The MPs of the opposition parties at the time write nothing about the fact that Amri did not commit the crime. Do you have the thesis that Amri was not the culprit, exclusive?

I just go one step further. The members of the Bundestag committee were also divided. The majority of the committee from the then government factions of the CDU / CSU and SPD declared in their vote that Amri was undoubtedly the perpetrator. The representatives of the FDP, the Left and the Greens did not go that far. They sought a consensus for their joint special vote. I know that the Greens go the furthest in their assessment, followed by the FDP.

The Green Konstantin von Notz said: “Anis Amri was well connected in the terror scene in Europe, was one of the leading figures there for many months, was absolutely in the focus of the German security authorities, and he has made it clear several times that he wanted to commit this attack . “

The question is when did he say that. Personally, until November 2019, I was also of the opinion that Amri had committed the attack.

The quote is from a interview with Deutschlandfunk in October 2019.

At the time I was also of the opinion that Amri is the alleged perpetrator – “allegedly” because the perpetrator was not established by a court. The level of knowledge changed from November 2019. For example, a video recording in the underpass at Hardenbergplatz, which is very close to Breitscheidplatz. The recording shows that Amri is walking towards the crime scene about five minutes after the attack, instead of taking the 9 underground line. Since then I have spoken of Amri as the alleged perpetrator. Konstantin von Notz calls him the “supposed” assassin.

The subtitle of your book is “A Terrorist Attack, Twelve Dead, and the Entanglements of the State”. What are the State’s entanglements?

I see entanglements before and after the fact. Amri was certainly part of the perpetrator group. If you ask me about my crime and perpetrator hypothesis, I’ll say: The crime was prepared for about a year and at least five to ten perpetrators were involved. There were informants around Amri. Overall, there is a double-digit number of V-people in the Islamist scene, there were at least five V-people in the Fussilet Mosque, where Amri frequented.

Incidentally, in the special opinion of the final report there are two things that I find downright electrifying and that I unfortunately could no longer include in my book. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has always asserted that there was only one informant in the Fussilet Mosque and that he had nothing to do with Amri. However, the special vote states that there was a second BfV source in this mosque. And in the special vote, the suspicion is expressed that Bilel Ben Ammar was an undercover agent for the protection of the constitution. Ben Ammar was a confidante of Amri; he was deported to Tunisia on February 1, 2017 – a few weeks after the attack. If he was actually an undercover agent, then his deportation makes sense.

In your opinion, are informants the background for the wrong investigations?

V-people can be a reason. If authorities have to make sure in their investigations that a V-Person is not exposed, then this may restrict the room for maneuver – so much that in the worst case it can happen that an act happens that you do not want. An example: When Amri arrived in Berlin by long-distance bus from Dortmund on February 18, 2016, he was briefly arrested by the LKA Berlin. The North Rhine-Westphalian LKA had absolutely wanted to prevent Amri from being checked – because the information that he was sitting in this bus could only come from a specific person, an undercover agent of the LKA North Rhine-Westphalia, who was “VP 01 “is called. As a result of the arrest, VP 01 was almost blown.

Amri was shot dead by police four days after the crime near Milan. You’re not saying now that he was shot to keep nothing out, are you?

I would rather approach the event slowly. The shooting marks the end of his escape, which is fraught with many questions. It starts with the fact that the investigators cannot or do not want to say where Amri was during the three nights he was on the run. It is unclear when and how he left Berlin. He was not seen until the morning after next in Emmerich near Kleve: A witness who knew Amri from the refugee home there spoke to him. This witness says Amri had a cell phone with her. Then Amri drives via Kleve to Nijmegen and Amsterdam to Brussels, where his trail is lost. Surveillance images show him making a phone call – so he must have had a cell phone. The next lunchtime he shows up in Lyon. From there he goes to Milan. By the way: In his belongings you will later find a train ticket from Lyon to Milan, as well as one from Turin to Milan. What did he use it for?

Was the phone found on him too?

The BKA claims that Amri did not have a phone with him when he was shot. But Italian investigators said he had a cell phone. In my opinion, there was a cell phone that had been made to disappear. And if he had a cell phone with him, he might even be guided. In short: There are also some inconsistencies about Amri’s death. And it fits into the picture that the BKA went to Milan with five people, but did not inspect the body, Amri’s clothes or his pistol. They only had photos shown. There was strong criticism of the behavior of the BKA – that is anything but professional. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office has therefore had the evidence come from Italy and is having them examined forensically. So far, she has remained silent about the status of the investigation.

Do you expect that the background to the crime will be clarified at some point?

So far, they have not been cleared up, the narrative of the lone perpetrator prevented that. I think that if the attack is to be cleared up, the work of the committee of inquiry in the Bundestag would have to be continued. There are victims of the attack who are demanding exactly this, who have already sent letters with corresponding requests to Bundestag President Bärbel Bas and Chancellor Olaf Scholz – with the information that Chancellor Angela Merkel has not kept her promise that this attack will be cleared up.

Hubertus Volmer spoke to Thomas Moser