Berlin – Anis Amri, an asylum seeker from Tunisia, is Europe’s most wanted man. Germany offered 100,000 euros (104,000 dollars) for information leading to his capture after he became the prime suspect in a truck attack in Berlin that killed 12 people.
It is becoming clear that the 24-year-old Amri was well known to authorities not only in Tunisia, but also in Italy, where he was convicted of crimes including arson, and in Germany, where he was the subject of a terrorism investigation.
Early 2011: Amri leaves his native Tunisia. He is wanted for armed robbery at the time, and a Tunisian court later tries him in absentia and sentences him to five years in prison.
February 2011: Amri arrives in Italy as one of the thousands of Tunisian boat migrants who crossed the Mediterranean in the wake of the Arab Spring, the ANSA news agency reports. He spends several months in a youth centre near the Sicilian city of Catania.
October 24, 2011: Amri is arrested alongside three other Tunisians on suspicion of arson, assault, intimidation and embezzlement, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reports.
A handout by German police dated December 21, 2016 showing Tunisian 24-year-old Anis Amri, the main suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack. Amri, an asylum seeker from Tunisia, is Europe’s most wanted man. Germany offered 100,000 euros (104,000 dollars) for information leading to his capture after he became the prime suspect in a truck attack in Berlin that killed 12 people. (Credit: German Federal Criminal Police)
He is sentenced to four years in prison, which he serves first at Catania prison and later at Palermo’s Ucciardone prison. As a detainee, he displays violent tendencies but does not appear to have been radicalized, ANSA cites security sources as saying.
Mid-2015: Amri leaves prison and is issued with a repatriation order, but Tunisian authorities do not respond in time to requests for his identification. He is let go and given orders to leave Italy of his own accord.
September 2015: Amri enters Germany via the south-western city of Freiburg, which is close to the Swiss and French borders.
He registers for asylum under a number of different names and nationalities – including Moroccan, Egyptian, Lebanese – and spends his several months in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
During this time, he is reportedly in contact with Abu Walaa, the suspected head of a group that recruited for and provided financial and logistical support to Islamic State.
February 2016: Amri moves to Berlin. He is on the authorities’ radar for operating as a drug dealer in Berlin’s Goerlitzer Park and getting into a bar fight.
March 2016: Amri becomes the subject of a terrorism investigation. German prosecutors say he was planning to carry out a robbery to make enough money to buy automatic weapons, “possibly to commit an attack with prospective accomplices.”
The terrorism investigation is suspended in September due to a lack of evidence.
June 2016: Amri’s asylum request is denied by German authorities. Officials say he could not be deported at the time because of diplomatic wrangling with Tunisia.
The relevant deportation documents arrived on Wednesday this week, two days after the attack, according to an official in North Rhine-Westphalia.
November 2016: German authorities exchange information about Amri at the country’s Joint Counterterrorism Centre in Berlin.
December 2016: German authorities lose track of Amri. During this time, Amri is suspected of having contact with known Salafists in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
December 19, 2016: A large truck laden with steel ploughs into a Berlin Christmas market, leaving 12 people dead and 48 others injured. Amri becomes the prime suspect in the case after his immigration documents are found inside the vehicle.
-dpa
