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Berlin (dpa) - Former NRW Interior Minister Ralf Jäger (SPD) does not want to testify as a witness in the Bundestag's investigative committee about the terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market in the coming week.

The committee's secretariat informed the members of the parliament that Jäger, member of the state parliament, had announced that he would not follow the summons if the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia met at the same time.

This caused considerable resentment among some members of the committee, especially since the taking of evidence is due to be completed next Thursday.

In addition to Jäger, two other witnesses will then be heard: the long-time Minister of the Interior of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lorenz Caffier (CDU), who announced his resignation last November, and the Berlin State Secretary Torsten Akmann.

The rejected asylum seeker Anis Amri shot a truck driver in Berlin on December 19, 2016.

Then he raced with the hijacked vehicle through the Christmas market on Berlin's Breitscheidplatz.

Eleven other people died there.

The Tunisian assassin was able to flee to Italy, where he was shot dead during a police check.

Amri had first lived in Kleve in North Rhine-Westphalia.

He was known to the authorities as an Islamist threat.

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"Ralf Jäger himself promised to clarify the Amri case, then he should also set the priorities correctly and contribute," said the FDP chairman in the investigative committee, Benjamin Strasser.

Jäger could have himself apologized for the session in the state parliament without major problems.

Strasser said: "It gives the impression that he wants to shirk."

The investigative committee is supposed to uncover errors by the authorities before and after the attack on the Memorial Church.

According to his statement in the committee, the head of the constitutional protection of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Reinhard Müller, had to vacate his post.

He had not passed on the information from an informant from his authority about alleged supporters of Amri from the Berlin clan milieu to the investigators.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210122-99-124889 / 2

Invited witnesses to the upcoming session