Italian police blitz Berlin massacre network

Police search one of the properties today. Photo: Polizia di Stato.

ROME – The latest in a series of terror raids across Italy saw police round up several people linked to the network of Anis Amri, the Tunisian man responsible for the 2016 attack on a Christmas market in Berlin that left 12 people dead and 56 injured.

 Police have detained five people in the capital and Latina as part of the “Mosaic” investigation. They are accused of crimes related to the training and planning of international terror attacks, including the supply of false documents to illegal immigrants in Italy.

 One of those detained, who hails from Tunisia, is said to be responsible for the acquisition of false documents for Anis Amri that allowed him to leave Italy.

 Amri used the documents to travel to Germany, where he drove a lorry into crowds of people at the market. He escaped to Italy where he was shot dead by police in Milan, following an exchange of fire.

 The other four arrested on Thursday are also Tunisian and are accused of having provided documents to hundreds of clandestine entrants to Europe, that allowed them to leave Italy.  

 Accompanying the arrests are a series of searches in the provinces of Rome, Latina, Caserta, Naples, Matera and Viterbo as police attempt to hoover up information on the network.

 It is the latest in a series of anti-terror operations that have been taking place across Italy in the past week. Nonetheless, the arrests are the culmination of a long period of investigation that began by using the testimony of an Italian national close to Amri in late-2016 that allowed police to reconstruct his relational network prior to his departure for Germany in 2015.

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