Fury after UKIP donor Arron Banks tweets ‘Merkel might as well have driven the lorry herself’
A MAJOR UKIP donor has ignited anger after suggesting Angela Merkel "might as well" have driven the Berlin massacre lorry.
Brexit champion Arron Banks dropped the bombshell comment as populists across Europe tore into the beleaguered German chancellor over her controversial immigration policy.
Banks was on Twitter defending former UKIP leader Nigel Farage who claimed the Christmas market attack on Monday which killed 12 people was “no surprise” and would be part of “Merkel’s legacy”.
The suspect is believed to have arrived in Germany during the migrant crisis of last year.
During this time Merkel welcomed more than one million mostly male migrants after surging crowds began storming across borders.
But many on Twitter blame the individual who carried out the sickening mass murder rather than Merkel’s migrant policy that may have let him in.
One user reminded the insurance tycoon that “Merkel did not drive the lorry”.
But Banks then hit back, tweeting: “She might as well have.”
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This prompted one Twitter user to demand to know how the 50-year-old "sleeps at night?"
Populists and far-right groups across Europe have seized on the truck attack in Berlin as a way to slam Germany's liberal immigration policy - especially since the main suspect was a migrant who was a known criminal.
German anti-terror chiefs are ploughing their vast resources into finding one of the world’s most wanted men.
The chief suspect in Monday’s Berlin Christmas Market massacre is North African Anis Amri.
The violent criminal from Tunisia managed to get into Germany in 2015.
Panicked German cops have offered a £85,000 bounty for information leading to his Amri's arrest.
But Germany is braced for more murders amid fears Amri will try to wreak as much havoc as he can.
Bungling Berlin cops let the suspect slip through their hands after wrongly collaring a Pakistani refugee.
He was released from custody soon after because police found no blood or gun residue on him.
Meanwhile Amri fled under the noises of the hapless police officers.
As if that was bad enough, it has emerged that Amri was under covert surveillance for MONTHS earlier this year over fears he was planning a terror attack.
Police planned to raid refugee accommodation in Emmerich – home to about 50 asylum seekers – but had to wait hours due to a typing blunder on warrant papers, according to German news site .
ISIS has gleefully declared the Berlin truck attacker a "soldier of the Islamic State" in a sickening message claiming responsibility for the atrocity.
Monday's slaughter and a series of violent attacks and sexual offences involving migrants have hardened the German public’s attitude towards Merkel's liberal migrant policy.
On New Year’s Eve 2015 hundreds of sexual assaults, including at least 24 rapes, and numerous thefts were reported in Germany, mainly in Cologne city centre but also across the nation.
It is feared this could happen again this New Year.
Similar incidents were reported in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, and Bielefeld.
On July 18 a 17-year-old Afghan refugee wielding an axe and a knife attacks passengers on a train in southern Germany, severely wounding four, before being shot dead by police.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack.
Four days later an 18-year-old German-Iranian gunman apparently acting alone killed nine people in Munich.
The teenager had no Islamist ties but was obsessed with mass killings.
The attack was carried out on the fifth anniversary of twin attacks by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik that killed 77 people.
That same day a Syrian man wounded 15 people when he blows himself up outside a music festival in Ansbach in southern Germany.
Islamic State claims responsibility for the attack.
The 27-year-old arrived in Germany two years ago and claimed asylum. He had been in trouble with the police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and had faced deportation to Bulgaria.
The presence of almost a million recent migrants alone has served to trigger the biggest rise in right-wing support since the 1930s.
But Monday night’s terror attack could spell doom for Merkel’s bid for a fourth term in office next year even among those not voting for far-right parties, as her supporters feel uneasy about recent events.
Yesterday a Moroccan man arrested in Germany was charged with helping to plot last year’s deadly ISIS attacks on Paris in France.
Some in Germany fear the nightmare experienced by the French could be unfolding in their nation.
Redouane S. was detained in Lower Saxony in the north of the country on Tuesday, prosecutors said.
There are 7,000 “live cases” of terror suspects at large in Germany and it is “almost impossible” for the country’s authorities to investigate, the former head of UK intelligence has revealed.
Counter-terrorism expert and former head of MI6 Richard Barrett also warned that 550 “really extreme potential terrorists” were still in Germany.
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