Do you see the targeted training for a mass murder – or do the shaky images of a cell phone camera simply show the proverbial banality of evil? Pictures from the documentary “Christmas Market. Attack – The Islamist Network” show Anis Amri doing what quite a few of his age, who have too much time and too much energy, bawl with other young men in a basement room, he lifts weights on a weight bench. From today’s perspective, however, the exclamation he sends after every push he has made makes one sit up and take notice: “Allahu akbar”, Amri roars, “God is greater”.
Today’s perspective on the mass murder at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz five years ago could well change the documentary, which can be seen on this Monday after the day’s topics on ARD, on Tuesday at 8:15 p.m. on RBB and in a detailed, three-part version in the Media libraries. And not because the authors Sascha Adamek, Jo Goll and Norbert Siegmund managed to get pictures of Amri’s muscle training, presumably taken in an adjoining room of the Fussilet Mosque in Berlin-Moabit, which was used as a relay station for the IS terrorist network until it was closed was true in Germany. In addition to images that tend to satisfy voyeuristic interests and an important focus on the long-term consequences of the attack for survivors and relatives, the documentary poses an open question to this day: Did the young Tunisian really act as a “lone wolf” when he was only one in Berlin Murdered drivers and then rolled over people celebrating peacefully in their trucks?
Who was this Anis Amri really? The RBB journalists also ask former companions in prison.
(Photo: rbb / Manfred Hagbeck; RBB / rbb / Manfred Hagbeck)
Adamek, Goll and Siegmund have followed a lead and are now presenting a name and a photo of a possible person behind the scenes: on New Year’s Eve 2016, a few days after the attack, a BND employee received a tip from an “extremely reliable NDV”, secret service German for “Intelligence connection”: A 45-year-old named Ali Hazim Aziz, fighting name Abu Bara’a al-Iraqi, is said to have coordinated the activities of the terrorist militia in Germany and was also in contact with Amri as the right-hand man of the then IS commander for overseas operations . The German investigators, a member of a later parliamentary committee of the Bundestag reports on the attack, had googled the man, but the trace was then “silted up”. The documentation of the RBB now suggests that the hint should be followed up again with more commitment: According to a Kurdish politician, the man by no means died in fighting, but is still one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq.
Christmas Market. Attack – The Islamist Network. Monday, December 13th, 10.50 p.m. ARD; 14.12., 8.15 p.m. RBB. A three-part long version in the ARD media library.