Breitscheidplatz - "We don't know if Anis Amri was driving the truck."

This is not the usual plotting blog but a Member of the Bundestag who is a member of the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the terrorist attack on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin at the end of the investigation. Another great German mystery, piloted by the usual fake news spread by wise spin doctors, and probably destined to remain unsolved. It was quite difficult to believe the official version of the lone terrorist who, on a normal working day, in a normal industrial suburb of Berlin alone takes out a burly Polish driver and then drives his truck around the city undisturbed until the evening. A very interesting article from Heise.de

It is a sentence that sounds like a verdict, and expresses very strong doubts about the official version of the Breitscheidplatz bombing in Berlin: "We do not know if Anis Amri was driving. But according to the available evidence, there were other people in the truck". The Member of the Bundestag of the Greens Constantin von Notz said so at the last meeting of the committee of inquiry. The sentence was directed at a BKA investigating commissioner (Bundesskriminalamt) who could not explain many of the traces, but nevertheless stuck to the official version of Amri the lone bomber - as other BKA colleagues had done before and after him.

The work of the investigating committee leads to a question: Was Amri really the only man in the truck? "We don't know if Amri did it" doesn't mean "it wasn't Amri". But we are still very close to making that statement. Von Notz speaks rather of "Amri possible culprit". Definitely less than the formula "alleged guilty" and much less than the statement "Amri is guilty".

The urgency to reach the conclusion also includes a question: why did the central investigating authorities focus almost exclusively on the alleged lone murderer Anis Amri? The Tunisian at the time of the attack was undoubtedly in the vicinity of the crime scene. This is demonstrated by the video recording of 8:06 p.m. in the subway underpass at Bahnhof Zoo. And he was in possession of the murder weapon. He was probably part of a criminal group. But if he wasn't the driver, then someone else was behind the wheel of the bombing vehicle.

This also means that the bombing is open. The perpetrators and accomplices have yet to be found. Amri can be considered the first safe accomplice. There are more elements in favor of this scenario than the official version. Police investigators, as well as political investigators in the commissions of inquiry, have had to deal with other people connected to Amri - including the informants of the security authorities active in this environment. By focusing almost exclusively on Amri, however, much valuable time has been lost.

The case is also an example of how an entire apparatus can be manipulated and guided in a certain direction by simply giving a name - whether it is voluntary or not.

The statement: "we don't know whether Amri was driving the truck" among other things emerges from a rather dubious evidentiary pattern. What forensic evidence supports the hypothesis that Amri drove the truck, was responsible for the attack and shot the truck driver Lukasz Urban? How can we prove that the fugitive was driving the truck if his tracks are not found inside the truck? Was the glass dust also found on Amri's clothes, just like on Urban's clothes, which were in the truck? These are just some of the committee's questions, which the BKA criminologists cannot answer clearly.

On the contrary, the overall pattern of evidence makes it conceivable that there were other people on the truck.

Meanwhile, it is a fact that no prints of Anis Amri were found in the driver's cab of the truck. Not on the steering wheel, gear lever, dashboard or inside the driver's door, for example.

Only two fingerprints or Amri prints were found on the outside of the driver's door. One includes the palm, thumb and three fingers of the right hand. According to the BKA, the print was made "as if the door had been closed from the outside". How can you close a door from the outside and then sit in the cab? And how is it possible that Amri performed a "magic trick" (Konstantin von Notz), i.e. leaving his fingerprints on the driver's door, and then, assuming he stayed and moved on the truck for another 30 minutes, didn't even leave one inside? Have the investigators ignored all these contradictions just because they don't fit the Amri lone bomber theory?

"We have no evidence to rule out Amri as the killer."

The response of the BKA investigation coordinator, Chief Inspector A.Q., is tantamount to an oath: "We have no evidence to rule out Amri as the perpetrator. This statement prompts the Green MP to ask the rhetorical question: why does this tendentious interpretation of the traces that only and always lead to Anis Amri work so well? Von Notz at the same time also gives an answer: "Because the culprit is dead". If he had not died, he would have to prove his guilt in court, and with this evidence it would be quite difficult.

So no fingerprints from Amri in the truck - and where are we with DNA? The elements here are pretty thin, too. A mix of two people was found behind the wheel, but no full DNA profile was drawn. The part about the truck driver Urban dominates. The corresponding annotation in the report vaguely states that Amri is "to be considered" as the second person responsible for the DNA traces.

A mixed profile of three DNA traces was also found on the threatening piece of paper marked "HARDENBERGSTR B" (in capital letters), discovered in the truck cab only after three weeks. Hardenbergstraße is the entrance road to Breitscheidplatz. Once again the DNA of the truck driver Urban dominates, secondly is "must consider that of Amri", and in addition there is the DNA of an unknown third person.

Evidence is said to have been overlooked by the Criminal Police Task Force at the scene of the crime. That is, both during the first inspection on 30 December 2016 and during a second inspection by the BKA coordinators on 10 January 2017. Until then, the truck had been moved twice through the city. The note was in the dashboard in front of the speedometer display. Had it been overlooked by the police group that intervened at the original crime scene? It's hard to imagine. And the fact that it was deliberately ignored doesn't make much sense.

In fact, the man from BKA A.Q. cannot say whether the note was in the truck from the start and was overlooked, or whether "someone put it there". This means: a manipulation cannot be ruled out. Incidentally, it is only a piece of paper, the back is printed. Where it came from is not even clear.

Apart from the inexplicable DNA trace on the note, there are 13 other open DNA profiles, the BKA member told the committee. These 13 DNA traces were found in the truck driver's cab and "in front of the truck", by the way. It is unclear what is meant by "in front of the truck". Maybe the HTC cell phone. Another unknown DNA trace is a leather fragment on the headrest of the driver's seat.

If, in addition to unexplained traces of DNA, there are also untraceable fingerprints, this was not discussed in committee.

Strange photos

On Amri's HTC phone, strangely found in a hole in the truck's bodywork, there are two photos taken after the attack. Members of the Bundestag committee addressed the issue in the courtroom debate. 

The inexplicable discovery has been the subject of debate for weeks. In the meantime, the BKA has released an official technical explanation. In a letter to the committee it is stated: 'it can be ruled out that the image files were taken with Amri's HTC'. These would be image files from web pages that were automatically offered to the user on his device by a Google app in the form of preview images and stored in a cache file. The BKA had also identified the web addresses from which the 2 images were displayed. However, no direct link was found between the images and the web page, but "probably this is only available on the side of Google's servers", the document reads. However, the BKA assumes that the pictures can be assigned to the corresponding websites.

Unanswered questions about the crime truck

Essential questions were also raised about the vehicle used in the attack, the 40-tonne Scania truck. It had reached its maximum weight as it loaded steel beams and had a mass greater than that of the truck from the Nice bombing, which on 14 July 2016 had caused over 80 deaths. Did Amri know the truck was loaded? - asked Volker Ullrich (CSU), member of the commission. Was it a coincidence - or did someone deliberately choose this truck because it had a heavy load? Did anyone in Italy know the truck was going to Germany? Who loaded it? Was the choice of the murder weapon perhaps already made in Italy?

Questions to which even the BKA cannot answer, but which lead to the Italian scene of the terrorist attack in Berlin and the end of Amri's escape in Sesto San Giovanni near Milan. There, near where he died, the truck that later became the vehicle of the attack of December 16, 2016, at the last loading place had picked up a package.

What skills does a person who wants to drive such a heavy, long and cumbersome vehicle need? Especially at night, in the rush hour traffic of a big city. We don't even know if Amri had a driver's license to drive the car. Once the informant "Murat" had driven him from North Rhine-Westphalia to Berlin as a driver. But Amri's landlord, Kamel A, was a professional truck driver.

The truck enters the Christmas market at about 50 km/h, then within a distance of 70 - 80 meters it is braked until it stops, as would have happened in a serious car accident. Yet shouldn't the driver have left a trace? Sweat, blood, hair, skin flakes. And the accident left no marks on him? Injuries, abrasions, contusions, blood. With or without seat belt. Were there any corresponding marks on Amri's body? That's also unclear.

No confidant, supporter or accomplice?

The number of people, possible accomplices, who were in the vicinity of the crime scene at the time of the crime continues to increase: in addition to Amri's roommate, Khaled A., his confidant Ben Ammar, Walid S. or the brothers Ahmad and Bilel M., the commission discovered that Feysel H. could also have been in Breitscheidplatz shortly after the crime. Amri probably met Feysel H. at the Fussilet mosque an hour before the attack. As the board found out, so did Ahmad M., who then left the mosque minutes before Amri. That means three to four people have already been identified at the meeting place.

The BKA has identified a total of over 300 possible contacts for Amri in Germany. 43 have been classified as "potentially relevant to the crime". These include, in particular, the Berlin environment, including the radical mosque in Fussilet. In Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia, a series of telephone interceptions and inspections of apartments were carried out. In Dortmund, Amri had also used an apartment which, curiously enough, is located in Mallinckrodtstraße, near the NSU crime scene.

In no case are there any confidants, supporters or accomplices, not "relevant to the crime". At least in Ben Ammar's case, however, there was a well-founded suspicion of complicity. However, he was expelled, as happened to half a dozen of Amri's other contacts expelled after him. The suspects were either ignored or depotentiated - whether it was the presence at the scene of the attenatum or the DNA on the murder weapon.

His circle of people consisted of violent jihadists, drug dealers and organized crime, but they were not strictly separated from each other; on the contrary, they overlapped and mingled. The best example was the physical confrontation in July 2016 between Amri's accomplices and other Arabs in a bar of the Abou Chaker clan. Ahmad M., who was with Amri in the Fussilet mosque on the night of the attack, incidentally used the pseudonym "Ahmad Abou-Chaker".

Unknown identity of informants

The BKA representative, Kriminalhauptkommissar (KHK) D.G., responsible for investigating whistleblowers, shrugged his shoulders when asked if there were BKA sources in Amri's circle. Were there any reports from sources that provided information? Same way: no recollections.

It is known that the BKA in Berlin had at least two informants in the environment.

The Security Department of the LKA (Landeskriminalamt) in Berlin, which immediately took over the investigation on 19 December 2016, quickly became convinced that the Breitscheidplatz event was an Islamist attack. He immediately compiled a list of 40 people on Berlin classified as possible perpetrators and who were searched at home or in mosques from 23.00 onwards. Most of these searches, however, were not carried out immediately.

The other committee of inquiry, that of the Berlin House of Representatives, did not know who it was. But the name Anis Amri was not among those 40, explained Stefan Redlich, who at the time was in charge of the mobile task forces (MEK) and research groups that carried out these checks. About half of the suspects had been cleared when Amri's name became known on the afternoon of December 20, 2016. Checks on the people were interrupted and only the fugitive was subsequently sought. Amri's confidant, Ben Ammar, went into hiding for ten days. To date, investigators are still unable to say where he was.