Breitscheidplatz attack: blackened files and open questions

Even almost 2000 pages cannot answer all questions. And so important pieces of the puzzle are still missing in the final report on the attack on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin. Today the Bundestag deliberates conclusively.

The final report is ready, but many questions remain unanswered: How was the assassin’s escape route on December 19, 2016? What helpers did he have before and after? Why do traces at the crime scene seem illogical to this day? And why didn’t German security authorities realize how dangerous the assassin Anis Amri really was?

But one thing became clear: the German security authorities did not work well together. That is also the opinion of the committee chairman, Klaus-Dieter Gröhler, in whose constituency the attack was carried out. “What was also bad: the internal line-up of the Berlin police and also the cooperation within the Berlin authorities.” Of course, it is complicated with 16 state offices and the federal government. But there was simply too little exchange within the Berlin security authorities, said the CDU politician.

Blacked out files

Gröhler admits that the work in the committee was not always easy because files were late, heavily blackened or not reached the MPs at all. But he does not want to accept the opposition’s criticism of this. Thousands of files had been delivered by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Federal Criminal Police Office and the state offices.

The FDP, the Left and the Greens, on the other hand, complain: That should have been more and better. Irene Mihalic from the Greens found the cooperation with the federal government difficult in many ways: “My main point of criticism is that essential information was withheld from us. We could not hear all the witnesses we would have liked to hear. We had to go to the Federal Constitutional Court. That would have The federal government can simply avoid it from the start. ” You have also failed to create really comprehensive transparency with regard to the files and materials supplied. “We didn’t get everything, or we didn’t get it in the quality we needed.”

Permanent against resistance

Martina Renner, for the Left Party in the committee, sees it similarly. It could not be that MPs have to go to court to get files: “We have constantly fought against resistance: with legal means, with argumentative, with the possibilities of the public. And actually these are all taken for granted by democracy.”

At the end of the committee work, the question arises: What should change? There are around 40 security authorities in the federal and state levels. Criminal police offices, secret services, the protection of the constitution. Too many, thinks Stefan Keuter of the AfD parliamentary group: “Structures should be created here that prevent rivalries.” Synergies would have to be bundled in order to improve the security situation in Germany centrally. With so many offices, one hand often doesn’t know what the other is doing.

Several construction sites

According to the FDP, there are several construction sites. “We have established that something urgently needs to be changed in the parliamentary control of intelligence services,” says Benjamin Strasser. Many authorities have developed a life of their own. “And also the whole subject of informers, that is, extremist informers who provide information for money. Abuse continues, and that’s why we need a legal basis.”

Despite all the criticism: The committee has brought a lot to light and improved it: The survivors of victims of terrorism previously had little or no contact person, this is now more clearly regulated – as are questions of compensation and victim protection. In the end, the impression remains that the bereaved and members of parliament wanted clarification – but are often desperate about the confusion of the German authorities.