Berlin terror attack: Suspect killed (UPDATED)

Fred Moletrousers wrote:I would very much doubt whether anyone intent on murder who had just deliberately driven a lorry into a crowded area would hang around long enough to collect his personal belongings before baling out and legging it.

scrat wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:I would very much doubt whether anyone intent on murder who had just deliberately driven a lorry into a crowded area would hang around long enough to collect his personal belongings before baling out and legging it.

That would presume it to be an act of opportunism, (only certain suspects leave pristine evidence so conveniently placed in areas of total carnage) plus it is alleged that the suspect had time to hide these credentials (in a stolen vehicle that will be turned inside out) and leave his fingerprints on the steering wheel (Berlin is a bitter cold place during the festive season, most people wear gloves) although the vehicle was running in a stationary position for 45mins, plenty of time to warm the vehicle up so you can place your warmed fingers in order to leave a print, and that's enough time to stash those credentials in a place it will take days to find.

The thoughts of the authorities are as equally confusing, because they admit that the suspect was up until recently a person of interest, whose contacts were arrested only last month.

Now the Italian police have shot him dead on the streets of Milan in the early hours of the morning when surveillance is much easier to conduct.

Nothing adds up!

Good Grief.  Guess the collateral damage continues to prove; you'll have to be full-force better prepared than you just were ...or people are going to DIE!

New York Times wrote:Berlin Attack Suspect Is Killed by Police Near Milan

SESTO SAN GIOVANNI, Italy — Anis Amri, the chief suspect in the deadly terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin this week, was killed by the police in a shootout outside Milan around 3 a.m. Friday, ending a brief but intense manhunt across Europe, Italian officials announced.

Stopped in the suburb of Sesto San Giovanni, north of central Milan, Mr. Amri was asked to show identification papers, Italian officials said. He pulled out a pistol and shot the officer who had asked for the papers. A second officer then opened fire, killing Mr. Amri.

“The person who attacked our police officers was killed,” Interior Minister Marco Minniti said at a news conference. “There is absolutely no doubt that the person who was killed was Anis Amri, the suspect in the terrorist attack in Berlin.”

Law enforcement authorities issued a Europe-wide warrant on Wednesday for Mr. Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian who moved to Italy in 2011 and then relocated to Germany in 2015. How one of the most wanted men in Europe was able to travel seemingly freely after an attack that left at least 12 people dead will no doubt be a crucial question for investigators.

The Islamic State, which had called Mr. Amri “a soldier” who “carried out the attack in response to calls for targeting citizens of the Crusader coalition,” released a video on Friday that Mr. Amri had recorded, in which he proclaimed loyalty to the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and declared that he was avenging coalition airstrikes that have killed civilians.

Islamic State adherents are encouraged to send out such video pledges before launching attacks. Similar claims have been made by men who carried out assaults in Paris and Orlando, Fla. The videos have been recorded on laptops and cellphones and distributed through mediums like Facebook Live.

Mr. Amri is believed to have had ties to an Iraqi-born Salafist preacher who went by the name Abu Walaa and who has been jailed on suspicion of recruiting fighters to join the Islamic State, but the extent of those ties is not clear.

Also unknown is whether Mr. Amri had any accomplices for the Berlin attack — a question that Peter Frank, Germany’s top federal prosecutor, identified as a priority for investigators. “It is very important now to determine if there was a network of cooperators, a network of supporters, accessories or assistants helping him to prepare the attack, execute the attack and also to escape,” he said at a news conference in Karlsruhe, Germany.

A third big question is how such a prominent fugitive managed to leave Germany. According to tickets that the Italian police found on Mr. Amri, he traveled by train to Turin, in northwestern Italy, from Chambéry, France. He then continued to Central Station in Milan, where he arrived around 1 a.m. on Friday.

Counterterrorism officials have said that the ease of movement within the 26-country Schengen area poses security challenges. “This mobility is great for the law-abiding and equally great for the non-law-abiding,” said Douglas H. Wise, a former senior C.I.A. officer.

The authorities in Germany initially arrested a different man — later released — in connection with the attack, and that might have given Mr. Amri a head start in fleeing. He would most likely have been able to buy train tickets without having to show identification papers.

Moreover, facial-recognition software in surveillance cameras is still in rudimentary form in much of Europe; surveillance cameras have long been shunned in Germany, given its contemporary emphasis on personal privacy, although that position is being rethought.

Surveillance cameras in the Milan train station recorded Mr. Amri’s movements, Italian investigators said. It was not clear how Mr. Amri then made his way to Sesto San Giovanni, about 4.3 miles to the northwest of Central Station.

“How he traveled there and what he was doing there are subject to delicate investigations,” Antonio De Iesu, director of the Milan police, said at a news conference. “We have to understand whether he was in transit or was awaiting someone.”

Mr. Amri was “aggressive, firm and determined,” Mr. De Iesu said. He was carrying a small knife and the equivalent of a few hundred dollars, but no cellphone.

According to the account provided by Mr. De Iesu, Mr. Amri was standing alone on a piazza in Sesto San Giovanni, next to the northern terminus of the M1 subway line, when the officers stopped him and asked for identification.

Mr. Amri responded, in good Italian with a North African accent, that he was not carrying any documents on him. They asked him to empty his pockets and backpack. That is when he pulled out the pistol.

“It was a regular patrol, under the new system of intensified police checks on the territory,” Mr. De Iesu said. “They had no perception that it could be him, otherwise they’d have been more careful.”

Mr. De Iesu denied that Mr. Amri had shouted “God is great” in Arabic, as some local news outlets had reported. “He only shouted ‘police bastards,’ in Italian, after he was shot,” Mr. De Iesu said.

The officer whom Mr. Amri shot, identified as Cristian Movio, 35, was wounded in the shoulder and had surgery on Friday. The other officer, who shot Mr. Amri, was identified as Luca Scatà, 29.

Mr. Amri had been described as armed and dangerous, and a reward of 100,000 euros, or about $104,000, had been offered for information leading to his capture. The Berlin attack injured 53 people, 14 of them seriously, according to updated information released on Friday.

“As soon as this person entered our country, he was the most wanted man in Europe, and we immediately identified him and neutralized him,” Mr. Minniti said, although it seemed clear that the stop was routine and not part of a directed effort to find Mr. Amri. “This means that our security is working really well.”

Mr. Minniti was joined at the news conference by Franco Gabrielli, the chief of the state police, and by Gen. Tullio Del Sette, the commander of the Carabinieri. Mr. Minniti declined to discuss the details of the operation, noting that the investigation was still underway.

In Germany, officials expressed relief that Europe’s most intensive manhunt appeared to have been brought to a successful conclusion — but they faced tough questions about how and why Mr. Amri eluded the authorities in the months before the attack.

He had been ordered deported in June, but bureaucratic obstacles prevented the authorities from following through. And in September, the authorities stopped electronic monitoring of Mr. Amri, even though he had been identified as a security risk.

Mr. Amri left Tunisia, according to his relatives, with dreams of making money and buying a car. After arriving in Italy, he spent time in six jails and was a violent inmate.

In Germany, he was one of about 550 people identified as a danger to the state and placed under special surveillance.

Yet he was able to ignore deportation orders and brushes with the law, roaming freely until he was believed to have seized a truck, killed its Polish driver, and rammed it into a crowded market Monday night at Breitscheidplatz, a main square in Berlin.

Thanks to the brave efforts of police officers, “the Italians can have a very happy Christmas,” Mr. Minniti said. “Italy should be really proud of our security.”

Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Sesto San Giovanni, Gaia Pianigiani from Rome and Franziska Reymann from Berlin. Reporting was contributed by Rukmini Callimachi from New York, Sewell Chan from London, Alison Smale from Berlin, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

eddie wrote:Merging this into the other thread as it's already being discussed there.

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:Merging this into the other thread as it's already being discussed there.

OK, but change the title to reflect that he's been apprehended and killed.  That's the news.

4EVER2 wrote:

scrat wrote:
That would presume it to be an act of opportunism, (only certain suspects leave pristine evidence so conveniently placed in areas of total carnage) plus it is alleged that the suspect had time to hide these credentials (in a stolen vehicle that will be turned inside out) and leave his fingerprints on the steering wheel (Berlin is a bitter cold place during the festive season, most people wear gloves) although the vehicle was running in a stationary position for 45mins, plenty of time to warm the vehicle up so you can place your warmed fingers in order to leave a print, and that's enough time to stash those credentials in a place it will take days to find.

The thoughts of the authorities are as equally confusing, because they admit that the suspect was up until recently a person of interest, whose contacts were arrested only last month.

Now the Italian police have shot him dead on the streets of Milan in the early hours of the morning when surveillance is much easier to conduct.

Nothing adds up!

Not that 'I' am specifically in the know, for how/what/why the Germans didn't have that section of the Holiday celebration blocked off from traffic; especially after the terrorists attack method used in France with such a vehicle.  But all I know is what the NSA talking heads were discussing on a media panel, as they were showing the diorama of these sections of Germany's streets and where those concrete barriers 'should have been placed'!

WHY - WHY, didn't they have those set up? 
Good Grief.  Guess the collateral damage continues to prove; you'll have to be full-force better prepared than you just were ...or people are going to DIE!

nicko wrote:Did you Google it then?  

eddie wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

OK, but change the title to reflect that he's been apprehended and killed.  That's the news.

Didn't your mum teach you to say please?
It's a bugbear of mine.

Done it anyway.

scrat wrote:Its certainly ramping up the heat on an already boiling pressure cooker, the visceral attacks on Merkel by the far right alt right will trigger another round of increased far right terrorist activity which only serves to assist all these terrorists further as resources strain to cover all the fanatical  malcontents.

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

OK, but change the title to reflect that he's been apprehended and killed.  That's the news.

Didn't your mum teach you to say please?
It's a bugbear of mine.

Done it anyway.

Did you say pleeze?

Anyway, I'm a lawyer.  We don't ask, we demand.  Often when I write a "Demand Letter" I regret that the profession assumes such a perspective, and the language it assumes.  But it's the common understanding in our trade.

nicko wrote:What's the difference between a good Lawyer and a bad Lawyer?

A bad Lawyer can make a case last a long time,

A good Lawyer can make it last longer !