| Police stand in front of the truck which ploughed last night into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital Berlin, Germany, December 20, 2016 |
German authorities have released a Tunisian man detained on suspicion of involvement in the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market last week that killed 12 people, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.
“Further investigation has shown that the arrested person was not the possible contact person of Anis Amri and therefore he was released,” Frauke Koehler said, referring to the man believed to have hijacked the truck and ploughed it into crowds at a Christmas market in the capital last week.
Investigators found the mobile phone number of the released 40-year-old Tunisian stored in the phone of Amri.
The spokeswoman said that a gun Amri used in the truck had the same caliber as the one he fired at Italian police in Milan, where he was shot dead last week. More tests were needed to determine whether it was the same gun.
She added that the truck’s automatic breaking system stopped the vehicle 70 to 80 metres (164 yards) after it hit the market, avoiding more casualties.