The comments expresses the writer’s opinions.
After a few years in this city, you can hear the difference in the sirens from the fire department, ambulances, police.
And you know that if law enforcement suddenly starts driving savages in their tiny Opels on the sacred bike lanes, well then it’s serious.
The local TV station was quick to report that someone had crashed into a crowd on Kurfürstendamm.
Click here to subscribe to newsletters from the Norwegian debate
Flashback
I myself got a flashback to 19 January 2016, when a young Tunisian drove a stolen lorry straight into the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz.
At that time, the security work afterwards – and the police’s efforts – were marked by chaos. But since a spokesman assured on TV that the perpetrator had already been arrested, there was no reason for a magazine jerk not to take a camera and run to the scene.
Amir Anis had smashed most of the log cabins with stalls. Twelve Christmas-themed mulled wine customers were left dead. The thirteenth died the other day. Over 50 people were severely injured in some cases – many of them will struggle for the rest of their lives with injuries and after-effects.
Also read: German media: One dead and several injured after a car drove into a crowd
Wrong perpetrator
Only many hours later did it become clear that the perpetrator – and his accomplices – were still at large. The detainee turned out to be a Pakistani refugee in mental imbalance. The man was probably suspected because he went outside in only his T-shirt in the middle of winter and responded incoherently to the indictment.
It turned out that the terrorist Amir Anis had lived in Germany for about two years, where he had run a hectic travel business between different states.
With 14 authorities, he was registered as an asylum seeker under the same number of – false – names. Between the sessions of sneaking in social support under several names, Anis also had time to build up a network for drug trafficking.
He was also registered as a permanent member of an extremist Berlin mosque with ties to IS.
Asbjørn Svarstad
Asbjørn Svarstad started writing in the local newspaper Dagningen, was for a few years associated with VG. From 1987 Dagbladet’s stringer in Copenhagen. Has since 1996 lived permanently in Berlin where he has worked for various Scandinavian media. Works mostly with historical feature articles, political commentary and is an authorized guide in Sachsenhausen.
–
–
–
Traveled freely
In several states, Amir Anis was caught by the radar, and was even under surveillance by both the police and the security service for a few months.
But such is expensive, and after a few weeks it was decided that the object was probably less interesting than first thought.
It was later revealed that if the authorities in several states had forced the police and surveillance service to exchange information across regional and professional boundaries, they would be left with more than enough offenses to put the suspected extremist in custody – with a view to deportation .
But instead he was allowed to travel freely around Germany.
After the assassination attempt at Breidscheidplatz, he must have boarded a train south. Four days later, Anis was killed by Italian officers who fired as he tried to pull out a weapon.
Read more comments from Asbjørn Svarstad
The commissions
Afterwards, the alleged perpetrators in various German bureaucracies attacked each other, with accusations in the east and west.
It became clear that important information was not released to the public. Commissions were set up and parliamentarians at various levels flipped through tons of paper to get an idea of what had actually taken place – and where the dog had to be buried.
Much suggested Amir Anis was not alone. But clues and evidence pointing to specific accomplices were refused to be handed over to the parliamentary investigators.
The secret stamp, must know. (Consideration for other states is always most important.) Therefore, we also do not know why they were never tracked down and held accountable.
It was revealed that police officers had falsified old reports so that they themselves would appear in a slightly less negative light.
Then followed the usual tricks with documents that – completely inexplicably – had disappeared, witnesses who could not be traced or officials who suffered from acute memory loss. The one final report that was written was so full of graded material that it was stamped secret – just to make it all totally grotesque.
These are Nettavisen’s columnists
What happened?
First and foremost, the survivors and survivors of the terrorist act still demand an answer as to what really happened, how many terrorists actually struck – and how the state could fail to such an extent in preventing an obviously life-threatening extremist from moving freely around German society.
It was not so festive afterwards to think that I myself might have bumped into Amir Anis – or one of his conspirators – when I ran through the city to photograph the crime scene.
The police had assured the citizens that it was no longer dangerous to move outdoors. In Paris a few months earlier, just that happened – that the terrorists shot at everything that moved.
Yesterday’s terrorist is 29 years old and is both a German and an Armenian citizen. He had not prepared any confession, but in his car the police found posters with anti-Turkish slogans.
Not by chance
There seems to be no doubt that the rampage was carried out intentionally and knowingly.
Witnesses tell how the car – after hitting the group of teachers and students from a small town in Hesse – turned out onto the street again and continued 200 meters, before the driver again drove onto the sidewalk.
The man did not manage to hit more pedestrians until the wild journey stopped in the shop window of a perfumery.
The choice of crime scene can not be random.
In 2016, the terrorist struck on the north side of the Gedächniskirche. This time it happened on the south side. The characteristic half-tower church is a ruin after the bombing of Berlin during the last war. Afterwards, it was decided to keep it as it was – as a protest against war and human contempt.
Read more from the Norwegian debate
In the coming days, we will probably get to frolic in the most private details of a failed 29-year-old’s life. But this time it was probably not political and / or religious extremism.
Though who knows? Our own terrorists are also crazy.
After taking a look at yesterday’s devastation and misery, I walked past the scene from 2016.
The names of the victims are embossed in the steps of the church’s concert hall. In several places there are framed pictures of the individual victims and perhaps a flower.
But the answers to what really happened then – look we have never received.
–
