Europe

Home page

Europe

Berlin market attack: driver still at large after 'wrong man arrested'

20 December 2016 13:51 (UTC +04:00)

German police believe they arrested the wrong man over the Berlin terror attack and the real culprit could still be at large, a German newspaper has claimed, adding the real perpetrator could be armed and dangerous, The Telegraph reported.

"We have the wrong man," an unnamed police source told Welt newspaper. "This means the situation is different. The real culprit is still armed and can commit further atrocities."

A man arrested on Monday night under suspicion of ploughing a 7-tonne truck through a Christmas market in the heart of Berlin, killing 12, was named in German media reports as Naved Baluch, a 23-year-old asylum seeker of Pakistani origin.

German media reported first that Baluch was denying responsibility for the attack and later - citing senior police sources - that he was the wrong man. This has not been officially confirmed.

Baluch was picked up about 2 kilometres (1½ miles) away from the scene of the attack in which 12 were, near the Victory Column monument.

Berlin's public radio station RBB-Inforadio had reported that the original suspect was a Pakistani citizen who entered Germany on Dec. 31, 2015, citing an unnamed security source. This partly concurred with those in other German media.

News agency dpa, also citing unnamed security sources, reported that he came to Germany as a refugee in February 2016. Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper reported that the man was known to police for minor crimes.

Berlin police declined to confirm the identification of the man as the alleged attacker, but a police spokesman said the man was being interrogated.
The Welt daily reported that police raided a large shelter for asylum-seekers at Berlin's defunct Tempelhof airport overnight. Four men are understood to have been questioned, but not arrested.

At least 48 were injured, some seriously, in the attack, after the vehicle mounted the pavement at about 40mph and crashed into them.

A passenger in the lorry – believed to be the original driver – was later found dead inside. German authorities confirmed that the passenger was a Polish national and that he was not the person in control of the vehicle, which belonged to a Polish delivery company, at the time of the crash.