MILAN, (Reuters) – Italian police shot dead the man believed responsible for this week’s Berlin Christmas market truck attack, killing him after he pulled a gun on them during a routine check in the early hours yesterday.
The suspect – 24-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri – travelled to Italy from Germany via France, taking advantage of Europe’s open-border Schengen pact to cross the continent undetected.
As anger grew over the fact that Amri had escaped expulsion twice in 18 months thanks to bureaucratic loopholes, eurosceptic parties called for the reintroduction of border controls, while Germany said deportations had to be made easier.
Amri is suspected of ploughing a truck through a festive Berlin market on Monday, killing 12 people. In a video released on Friday after his death, he is seen pledging his allegiance to militant group Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“I call on my Muslim brothers everywhere… Those in Europe, kill the crusader pigs, each person to their own ability,” he says in the video posted on Islamic State’s Amaq news agency.
Amri had arrived in Milan’s main railway station from France at 1.00 a.m. (0000 GMT) and then travelled to the working class suburb of Sesto San Giovanni, where two young policemen approached him because he looked suspicious idling on a street.
Milan police chief Antonio De Iesu told a news conference his men had no idea that they might be dealing with Amri.
“They had no perception that it could be him, otherwise they would have been much more cautious,” De Iesu said. “We had no intelligence that he could be in Milan.”
He failed to produce any identification so the police requested he empty his pockets and his small backpack. He pulled a loaded gun from his bag and shot at one of the men, lightly wounding him in the shoulder.
Amri then hid behind a nearby car but the other police officer managed to shoot him once or twice, killing him on the spot, De Iesu said. Amri was identified by his fingerprints.
