Final report: The sum of errors and omissions made the terrorist attack in Berlin possible

The Islamist terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market in 2016 only became possible through numerous errors in various security authorities in Berlin as well as in the federal government. This is the conclusion of the investigative committee of the Berlin House of Representatives in its final report presented on Monday. The report was approved by all political groups.

The committee chairman Stephan Lenz (CDU) said that “no single culprit” has been found and “no individual errors” have been discovered that would have led directly to the attack. However, the committee found numerous errors, especially by the police and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. “And it is the sum of these mistakes and omissions that made the attack possible.”

The main decisive factor was the misjudgment of the rejected asylum seeker Anis Amri from Tunisia in the summer of 2016. He was known as a violent and possibly highly dangerous Islamist. In the summer, Amri was no longer carefully monitored and wiretapped because the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) no longer classified his case as so explosive for various reasons.

In four years and 64 meetings, the committee of inquiry questioned 97 witnesses, including numerous criminal police officers from the LKA, constitutional protection officers, public prosecutors and politicians. More than 1,200 files were available to the committee. The 1,235-page report also contains separate statements from several political groups.

An investigative committee of the Bundestag had, among other things, also analyzed the role of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and there also found striking misjudgments about the assassin. Amri carried out the terrorist attack with a truck on December 19, 2016, killing twelve people.

As a problem before the attack, the committee names the fact that the areas of the LKA responsible for extremism and Islamism had too few staff. In addition, the exchange between the immigration authorities, the state criminal investigation offices of Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia, the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Berlin Public Prosecutor was inadequate.

Accordingly, there was a lack of “consistent risk management” and a consolidation of the investigations into suspects at the public prosecutor’s office. In addition, Amri should have been observed more intensively as well as at night and on weekends. His tapped phone calls and chats were not evaluated thoroughly enough.

After the attack, the Berlin police were significantly increased in personnel. According to the information, 587 new posts were set up in the LKA alone, many of them in the state security department, which is responsible for left-wing extremism, right-wing extremism and Islamism. In 2020 a separate department 8 for Islamism and Islamist terrorism was created in the LKA. According to the information, there are 166 jobs there, twice as many as before 2016. A new anti-terror center partially started work last month, and it should be ready by 2022.

The work processes in the LKA, for example for the observations, have been revised. The classification and monitoring of Islamist threats was also redesigned at the federal level by the BKA. In the so-called hazard management, the public prosecutor’s offices are also more involved than before. At the end of 2020, the Senate passed an anti-terror plan.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution already received its own section on Islamism in 2017, in which a more person-centered approach is to be taken. The exchange of information with the LKA should be much closer.

Broadcast: evening show, August 9th, 2021, 7.30 p.m.