Berlin terror killer trained under Germany's most dangerous Jihadist preacher
BERLIN terror attack killer Anis Amri began military style training for his assault on innocents in the city a whole year before the attack under the supervision of Germany's most dangerous Jihadist preacher.
Berlin terror killer Anis Amri was trained by Germany's most dangerous Jihadist preacher
It was revealed that Amri, 24, took a ten mile "toughening up" yomp through the countryside of North Rhine-Westphalia on December 23 1015 - exactly one year before his life ended in Milan when police shot him dead.
He was under the supervision of Abu Walaa - real name Abdulaziz Abdullah Abdullah - a top recruiter for Isis who now languishes in jail after being arrested along with several radical cohorts in November last year.
Charges of recruiting for Isis are being prepared and he will face trial before the summer.
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The Kölner Stadt Anzeiger newspaper on Thursday reported that he and his four arrested associates were also plotting carnage on their own.
According to the newspaper police infiltrated two informants into their network who reported back they had acquired guns and hand grenades for an attack on a police station. Another plan involved filling a lorry with petrol canisters and explosives before driving it into a crowd of people at a football match or carnival.
But German intelligence could not gather the "concrete proof" at the time to seize the group.
Amri was shot dead by police in Milan
It left Abu Walaa free to radicalise the nomadic Tunisian Amri who changed his plans to travel to Syria to wage war when Isis overlords decreed he should plot terror in Germany instead.
By early 2016, investigators said he was calling on other extremists to join him in an attack in the country: intercepts of his Internet usage showed he was interested in bomb-making and getting hold of automatic weapons.
And according to one of the police informers in the Abu Walaa cell he boasted that he would carry out "a bloodbath".
German intelligence could not gather 'concrete proof' at the time to seize the group
Yet still he remained free because investigators believed that they would fail in court to get a judge to convict him.
Berlin police tapped Amri's phone after he moved to the city in March. But when they went to a judge to ask for an extension, the only evidence they presented was his low-grade drug dealing.
German law allows for drug dealers to have their phones tapped only for six months. The listening ceased.
Germany urged Tunisia to provide him with a passport so the state could send him packing after his asylum bid failed. At first they told Germany he was not a citizen - this at a time when his attack plans were hardening.
Germany made a new request for papers after sending Tunis a fingerprint from Interpol to prove his nationality. The paperwork to deport him only arrived two days after the December 19 slaughter which killed 12 and wounded 48.