Authority chief considered reference to Amri contacts to be wrong

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Berlin (dpa) - The head of the protection of the Constitution of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Reinhard Müller, has rejected the accusation that his authority wrongly sunk important information from an informant about possible backers of the Christmas market bomber Anis Amri from the Berlin clan milieu.

Müller said on Thursday as a witness in the Bundestag's committee of inquiry into the terrorist attack on Berlin's Breitscheidplatz that the information provided at the time was "inconclusive" and was therefore not passed on to federal authorities.

When the MPs asked him about the employee who had reported the tip of the informant from Berlin to his head of department at the time, Müller replied that he could only make further statements in a secret meeting.

In the opinion of members of the committee, however, this head of unit could not conclusively explain in a secret hearing of witnesses why he had not passed the information on to the investigators or the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in February 2017.

At the time, his colleague thought the information was credible.

In 2019, he finally passed it on to other superiors and also to representatives of federal authorities.

Amri had hijacked a truck on December 19, 2016 and killed the driver.

Then the Tunisian raced with the vehicle through the Christmas market at the Berlin Memorial Church, where eleven other people died and dozen were injured.

How Amri, who was later shot by the police in Italy, managed to leave Berlin undetected after the assassination is still unclear.

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As the committee members have since found out, the informant from the Islamist milieu had reported to his contact at the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania around two months after the attack that he had overheard members of an Arab clan in Berlin - more or less by chance talked about Amri.

According to reports, the informant concluded from this and another conversation that they had given him money and also helped him escape.