Berlin truck terrorist ‘fled to Italy via Amsterdam on a budget coach with a handgun in his backpack and blood-stained clothes’
The terrorist could have been trying to throw police off his trail
THE Tunisian refugee who killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin fled Amsterdam on a budget bus with a handgun in his backpack, it has been reported.
Anis Amri evaded cops for four days and travelled from Germany to Holland to France to Italy - despite being the world's most wanted man and carrying a firearm.
Italian news agency ANSA said he took a bus from the Flixbus company from Amsterdam Sloterdijk station to Lyon without being checked.
The 24-year-old was gunned down by police officers in Milan in the early hours of December 23.
Security forces are now trying to piece together whether the jihadist was trying to slip back to his native Tunisia via Italy, where he is believed to have been radicalised in jail.
Meanwhile a man from Tunisia has been detained in connection with the Berlin truck attack.
Anis Amri, a rejected asylum seeker also from Tunisia, had the mobile phone number of the unnamed 40-year old stored in his telephone, prosecutors said.
Officials raided his home and business premises.
“Further investigations indicated that he could have been involved in the attack,” said prosecutors, adding that he was arrested.
“To what extent suspicions against the arrested person will be hardened up remains to be seen after further investigation,” said the prosecutors, adding they would decide by the end of Thursday whether to issue an arrest warrant for him.
Amri killed 12 people and wounded dozens more in Monday's assault on a Christmas market, which has been claimed by ISIS.
A massive manhunt was launched after he escaped the carnage, but he appears to have evaded police checks on his almost 1,000 mile journey.
A European arrest warrant was issued from Amri, who used six different aliases and three different nationalities.
Officials earlier revealed that Amri was a rejected asylum seeker with a history of crime, had spent years in an Italian jail - raising the terrifying prospect that there is an Italian terror cell and he was trying to reach them.
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News weekly Der Spiegel reported that in wiretaps, Amri could be heard offering to carry out a suicide operation, but that his words were too vague for an arrest warrant.
Amri had been monitored since March, suspected of planning break-ins to raise cash for automatic weapons to carry out an attack - but the surveillance was stopped in September because Amri was mostly active as a small-time drug dealer.
Amri was gunned down after a shootout with police saw one cop shot in the shoulder.
But rookie cop Luca Scata - who had only been in the job for nine months - shot him down as he tried to escape.
Interior Minister Marco Minniti today said: "The man killed was without a shadow of doubt Anis Amri."
Minniti gave very few details of the operation which took place on the outskirts of the northern city of Milan, saying investigations were still in progress. He added that there could be "future developments".
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