German police seeking Tunisian asylum on suspicion of attack in Berlin

By Paul Carrel and Matthias Inverardi

BERLIN / DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - German police are searching for a Tunisian who has sought asylum in the country after finding an ID card under the driver's seat of the truck that hit a crowd in a Berlin Christmas market and killed 12 people, Authorities and security sources Wednesday.

Ralf Jaeger, the Interior Minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, said the suspect apparently arrived in Germany in July 2015 and had his asylum claim rejected.

The suspect apparently used different names and was identified by security agencies as someone in contact with a militant Islamic network. The man was living mostly in Berlin this February, but was recently in North Rhine-Westphalia, according to Jaeger.

Since November the man was considered a possible threat by the security authorities. After having rejected the asylum application, he should have been deported, but could not be sent back to Tunisia because he was without documents, according to Jaeger.

The new details added to the list of questions about the role of security officials in stopping the attack, in which a 25-ton truck hit a crowd and knocked down wooden stalls selling typical foods and beverages. The attack was the most lethal on German soil since 1980.

Christmas markets have been singled out as a possible target for Islamist militants since at least 2000 when authorities uncovered a plan to attack one of them in Strasbourg, France. The modus operandi in Berlin was identical to that used in the Bastille Day attack in the French city of Nice in July when a Tunisian citizen killed 86 people while driving a truck along the sidewalk on the edge of the city.

Security sources said the document found by Berlin investigators in the truck used in Monday's attack was in the name of Anis A., born in Tataouine, southern Tunisia, in 1992. By convention, suspects in Germany are identified By the first name and an initial one.

A Tunisian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tunisia is trying to verify the information.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said a search operation across Europe had been under way since midnight. The Rheinische Post newspaper said police began searching for immigrant shelters in western Germany where the suspect lived.

SYMBOLIC TARGET

The pre-Christmas massacre at a symbolic location in Berlin - the feet of a bombed church in World War II - shocked the Germans and triggered security measures across Europe, already on alert after the attacks this year on France and Belgium.

The possible, but not yet proven, involvement of an immigrant or refugee has also revived a heated debate over security and immigration, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is being pressured to brake new entrances after allowing more than a million Installed in the country in the last two years.

Merkel, who will run for a fourth term next year, said it would be particularly repulsive if a refugee seeking protection in Germany was the perpetrator.

Police initially arrested a Pakistani asylum seeker near the scene of the attack, but released him without charges on Tuesday. Authorities have warned that the attacker is still on the run and may be armed. It is not clear whether the perpetrator is acting alone or accompanied.

The truck used at Christmas belongs to a Polish carrier, and the Polish driver of the vehicle was found shot dead in the cabin. The Bild newspaper reported that he was alive until the attack occurred. The newspaper quoted an investigator as saying there must have been a fight with the attacker, who may have been injured.

The Islamic state took responsibility for the action, as it did with the Bastille Day attack in France.

The director of the German Criminal Detectives Association, Andre Schulz, told the nation's television station Tuesday night that police expect to make another arrest soon.

"I am relatively confident that perhaps tomorrow, or in the near future, we may present a new suspect," he said.

Police arrested another suspect in the early hours of Wednesday morning, but released him a little later, according to RBB.

The head of the Interior Ministry group of the 16 German federal states, Klaus Bouillon, said that stricter security measures had to be taken.

"We want to increase the police presence and strengthen the protection of the Christmas markets, we will have more patrols, the agents will have machine guns, we want to make access to markets more difficult, with vehicles parked through them," Bouillon told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper on Wednesday .

Some politicians have blamed Merkel's open-door immigration policy for making such attacks more likely. The anti-immigrant Alternative to Germany (AfD), which gained support in the last two years as the chancellor's popularity slump, said on Tuesday that her country was no longer safe.