(Deutsche Welle) December 19, 2016, was a particularly dark day for Germany’s Joint Counter Terrorism Center. That was the day when the terrorist Anis Amri steered a stolen truck into a crowd of people at the Christmas market on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz. Twelve people died, and over 60 were injured, some of them critically. Many victims are still suffering today from the consequences of the worst Islamist attack in Germany.
The tragic twist to the story was that police had had the attacker on their radar for a long time. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) had long had him on their list of “Gefährder” (potential attackers or dangerous persons), a term used for suspects who might carry out an attack at any time. The special investigator appointed by the Berlin Senate gave the security authorities a devastating report, saying “everything that could be done wrong, was done wrong.”
