Breitscheidplatz: Five years after the attack, there is grief and anger

Breitscheidplatz
Five years after the terrorist attack, sadness and anger remain

The steps at the Memorial Church near Berlin’s Ku’damm are adorned with twelve names. They all lost their lives five years ago in a terrorist attack on the Christmas market on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz. Together with a golden crack in the floor, the labeled steps form the memorial for the terrorist attack by Islamist Anis Amri. Now a 13th panel has to be added. A first aider died a few weeks ago from the long-term effects of his injury.

The last victim of the Breitscheidplatz attack died two months ago

Eleven people died in the rubble when the terrorist drove the hijacked truck across the stalls. He had killed the truck driver beforehand. On October 5 this year, a 49-year-old man died of long-term effects from an injury sustained while rushing to the rescue immediately after the attack. He was allegedly hit in the head by a bar. Since then, he has had to be looked after around the clock. He is classified as the 13th fatality in the attack.

For the fifth anniversary of the attack, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) and Berlin’s Governing Mayor Michael Müller (SPD) are expected on Sunday evening. At a prayer in the Memorial Church, Steinmeier and Müller want to give short speeches; the sermon comes from the evangelical bishop Christian Stäblein. The Catholic Archbishop Heiner Koch, a rabbi and an imam are also present.

A silent commemoration with flowers, wreaths and candles on the steps is planned at the memorial. The names of the 13 dead are read out; at 8:02 p.m., the time of the attack, the church bell strikes 13 times.

Those affected criticize the processing of the Berlin authorities

People who were injured back then as well as relatives of those killed will also take part in the memorial. Some of the more than 200 people affected criticize the authorities because they do not feel they are being looked after or supported adequately. And because, in their opinion, the background to the terrorist attack has not been fully clarified.

“I can understand that,” says Berlin’s victim commissioner Roland Weber. Affected and bereaved families would have experienced “unhappy communication from the very beginning”. The approximately 200 applications to the pension office according to the Victims Compensation Act, however, were largely decided positively. According to Weber, there were four lawsuits against the decisions in social courts and two contradictions.

A large part of the money made available by the federal government for victims of terrorist attacks was therefore paid to those affected and survivors of the Berlin attack, around 3.7 million euros. A total of almost 5.6 million euros have flowed from several pots so far, according to the federal victim commissioner, Edgar Franke.

In letters to Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Bundestag President Bas recently, some victims and bereaved relatives called for further clarification of the background to the crime. In the final report of the committee of inquiry, many questions remained unanswered, “and the victims and first aiders were not heard,” it says. In fact, several committees of inquiry had questioned hundreds of witnesses in parallel and found that the attack had been preceded by numerous errors in the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), in the Berlin State Criminal Police Office (LKA), in the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in public prosecutors and other authorities.

Criminal Investigation is focusing more on Islamism

There was “no single culprit” and “no single error” that led directly to the attack, it was said in Berlin. “It is the sum of these mistakes and omissions that made the attack possible.” The rejected asylum seeker Anis Amri from Tunisia was known to be a violent and possibly dangerous Islamist. Nevertheless, he was no longer monitored or wiretapped, let alone withdrawn from circulation.

After the attack, the Berlin criminal police received additional staff. The LKA in Berlin has a new department for Islamism and Islamist terrorism, as well as new vehicles, weapons and protective clothing.

The federal and state police authorities have been using a new analytical tool since July 2017 in order to better assess how high the risk of violence is posed by a certain Islamist threat. Radar-iTE is designed to help the police set the right priorities in everyday life. So that, of the currently around 550 Islamist threats, the focus does not fall on those who are particularly likely to commit an attack.

Discussion about how to deal with endangered persons

The example of the young Syrian who attacked a homosexual couple in Dresden in October 2020 and killed one of the two men with a knife shows that this does not always succeed. According to the authorities, it was only in Germany that he sought and found a connection to the Islamist scene. Since 2017, the authorities have had him on the screen as a threat. In 2018 the Dresden Higher Regional Court sentenced him to a youth penalty for promoting the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia. After his release from prison, the alleged perpetrator was observed, but not around the clock. Deportations to Syria have not been possible for years.

“I am assuming that the network, as far as monitoring threats is concerned, is now more closely meshed than in 2016,” says Alexander Throm (CDU). The domestic political spokesman for the Union parliamentary group was a member of the Breitscheidplatz investigative committee of the Bundestag in the past electoral term. He advocates using the instrument of preventive detention with dangerous Islamists. Also with a view to obstacles to deportation, as in the case of the Syrian from Dresden. A change in the law would be necessary for the subsequent order of preventive detention – i.e. in cases where someone only turns to the jihadist ideology while in custody.

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DPA