A man believed to be the perpetrator of a Monday terrorist attack in the German city of Berlin has been killed in Italy. Italy’s interior minister confirmed that Anis Amri, wanted in the Berlin attack, was killed in a shootout with police in the northern Italian city of Milan on Friday. Minister Marco Minniti said that all the necessary checks were conducted after the shootout and that “the person killed, without a shadow of a doubt, is Anis Amri, the suspect of the [Berlin] terrorist attack.”Minniti said, however, that investigations were still in progress and that there could be “future developments.” A short video posted on the website of Italian magazine Panorama suggested that the shooting happened before dawn, with police gathered around a cordoned-off area in the dark.

Amri was the main suspect in an attack on a busy Berlin Christmas market on Monday. He allegedly ran a 40-ton truck into a crowd, killing 12 people and injuring 48 others. Shortly before the shootout in Italy, police in Denmark had said that a man matching his description had been seen in Aalborg in northern Denmark. Danish police said people had to keep away from the area as a security operation had been launched there.

German investigators had said they believed Amri was still laying low in Berlin because he was probably wounded, Der Tagesspiegel reported citing security sources. In the early hours of Friday, German special forces also arrested two men suspected of planning an attack on a shopping mall in the city of OberhausenIn in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, police said in a statement. A police spokesman said there was no connection between the Duisburg arrests and the Amri case.

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A former director at the British MI6 has claimed that German intelligence authorities are overwhelmed by and are almost unable to track some 7,000 “live” terrorist cases in their country. Richard Barrett told the BBC Radio 4’s Today program that there were around 550 “really extreme potential terrorists on the books” in Germany.

“If you include all the Lander (local regions) in Germany, they have about 7,000 live cases,” he claimed. “As you can imagine, that is an almost impossible number to control.” Barrett is a former director of global counter-terrorism operations at the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as the MI6.

In addition, Barret said, a wider group of potential suspects were those who had “come to attention in this context of radical extremism,” and were therefore “worthy of investigation.” It was not clear whether Barret was citing official data from Germany and, if so, how he had obtained it; and there was no comment from German intelligence authorities as of Friday morning.

German security forces have been criticized for a recent terrorist attack in the country that killed 12 people and injured 50. The Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, which is mainly active in militancy in Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the Monday attack. Germany security officials have identified the main suspect in the terrorist attack, in which a 40-ton truck was rammed into a busy Berlin Christmas market, as Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian asylum seeker.

Amri, who had been under surveillance by German intelligence after he arrived in the country in 2015 and had been arrested three times already this year, should have been deported several months ago as his asylum application had been rejected.

However, Amri’s deportation papers were never served to him as he slipped under the radar despite being a known radical extremist who is alleged to have received weapons training, possibly by Daesh militants. Police have now spread a dragnet to find Amri, who remains at large and possibly dangerous.

Presstv

At least nine people have been killed and over 50 others injured after a truck drove into a Christmas market in the German capital Berlin.

Berlin police have arrested the driver of the lorry that rammed into people shopping near the scene but say they are yet to confirm whether or not the attack was deliberate.

According to police reports, a second suspect, the co-driver of the truck, was killed during the crash. The Daesh Takfiri terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack in twitter. The attack took place in Breitscheidplatz, a major public square in the inner city of Berlin.

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An EU report warns that a third of the estimated 5,000 European nationals who traveled to Iraq and Syria to join Takfiri terrorists have returned home, probably with a mission to launch attacks. The report, to be presented to EU interior ministers on Friday by the bloc’s counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove, said as many as 1,750 Takfiri terrorists may have returned home.  Fifty-percent of the terrorists remain in the battle theater, which amounted to between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans, while between 15 to 20 percent of those who joined the terrorists have died, the report added.

There were two types of “foreign terrorist fighters” returning, the report said, identifying them as “those in the majority that will drift back, and those who will be sent back on specific missions, which are of most concern.” Even some European women and children born or raised in areas under the control of Daesh could present a security threat as they may have been influenced by the group’s Takfiri ideology, it added.

Some returnees have been convicted and serving prison sentences, while some others are being carefully monitored and some are free in their communities, the report said without giving any figures. Last month, Belgium warned that Takfiri terrorists were increasingly returning to Europe. Daesh claimed responsibility for March 22 Brussels attacks which killed 32 people. The attackers were linked to November 2015 attacks in Paris, which killed some 130 people.

According to the new report, “there is also a significant foreign terrorist fighter contingent with Daesh in Libya which might attempt to use their nationality or family connections to return to Europe.”  It said the European Takfiris remain in touch with Daesh via social media networks, and are greatly migrating from the from mainstream Twitter social networking service to Telegram end-to-end-encrypted messaging service.

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A Labour lawmaker in the United Kingdom has revealed that the Members of Parliament sexually harass young employees but can go unpunished as their victims feel helpless. Labor MP John Mann made the remarks at the House of Commons’ Standards Committee on Tuesday, saying that sexual assault by politicians at Westminster was a “major issue” to be addressed. “In here [Westminster], there are alleged sexual assaults by current members of Parliament and nowhere for people to go, or they don’t feel confident in going. That’s a major issue,” he said.

Mann called for the necessity of setting up a whistle-blowing service to help victims come forward, adding that the female employees did not feel secure to raise the issue. The lawmaker told the committee that he was aware of cases where staff had “significant issues” with the way current parliamentarians behave towards them but he was powerless to report colleagues to police because “there is no criminality” involved.

“That is not a matter of criminality but [one] that would be potentially an issue for whistle-blowing to make a complaint. The cases I am aware of, there is no criminality otherwise it would be very straightforward. I would be advising go to the police,” he said. In a shocking example, Mann said that older MPs would force young female interns to work late before “pressing” them into going home with them.

“There has been improper sexual behavior in this building that I am aware of with members of staff by Members of Parliament, including in recent times, the last two years, and I have had complaints of that, the individuals do not feel comfortable or confident, working in a political environment, of raising that issue and explicitly did not want me to raise the issue and therefore potentially have them named,” Mann noted.

UK MPs are already embroiled in other sexual scandals. In 2015 alone, reports by UK media reveled that over 247,000 attempts were made by users of the British parliament’s network to check out pornographic material.

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There are reports that the Cameroon embassy in Brussels, the Belgian capital was vandalized by unknown gunmen. Local media reports say the discovery was made by the Cameroon Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, Daniel Evina Abe.

Cameroon Concord News is yet to confirm the correctness of this developing story, but a sister publication Cameroun-info.net recently reported on the incident and cited Cameroon diplomatic sources in Yaoundé.

We gathered that several embassy vehicles including very important documents were carried away. Some reports have suggested that a Cameroonian opposition group may be behind the action. Moreover, an open inquiry announced by the Belgium police has not yet revealed its findings.

By Chi Prudence Asong