Flowers and candles are placed at the Christmas market at Breitscheid square in Berlin, Germany, December 30, 2016, following an attack by a truck which ploughed through a crowd at the market. PHOTO: REUTERS
BERLIN: The Tunisian man who killed 12 people last month by ploughing a truck into a Berlin Christmas market had made several trips to Switzerland and may have procured a gun there that he used to hijack a truck for the attack, German broadcaster ZDF reported.
"A lot speaks for that in the investigations so far," ZDF said of the possibility that Anis Amri, a failed asylum seeker from Tunisia, obtained the gun in Switzerland.
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Analysis of data from Amri's mobile phone indicated that he had visited Switzerland many times, ZDF reported, without citing its source. Amri was killed in a shootout with police in Milan on December 23rd 2016.
Switzerland's Office of the Attorney General (OAG) said on Wednesday it had opened criminal proceedings in connection with the Berlin attack on December 19th.
The OAG neither confirmed or denied that the suspect had stayed in Switzerland or had obtained the gun in the country.
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"The OAG has opened criminal proceedings against unknown persons based on information from abroad," an OAG spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday. It said the information received was related to contact data linked to Amri.
"The aim of the criminal procedure is to clarify possible points of contact with Switzerland which could be of interest to foreign colleagues," the spokesperson said, adding this applied to information about logistics, people and the weapon. "At the moment there is no verified information."
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