Body of suspected Berlin Christmas market attacker returned to Tunisia

The remains of a terror suspect killed while on the run in Italy land in Tunisia for burial in his home town of Oueslatia.

MENA

1 min read

The New Arab

01 July, 2017

Anis Amri [pictured in frame] was killed while on the run in Italy [AFP]

The body of the man suspected of being behind a deadly truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market was repatriated to Tunisia on Friday for burial.

The remains of 24-year-old Anis Amri - who was killed in December by police while on the run in Milan - landed at the Tunis-Carthege airport and were tranferred to his family, an airport source said.

Amri, a rejected asylum seeker, will be buried in his hometown of Oueslatia, AFP was told by one of his siblings.

The Tunisian national is believed to have hijacked a truck and driven it into a crowd at a busy Berlin market in December. Twelve people were killed as a result of the rampage.

The Islamic State group later claimed responsibility for the attack, when a video was released showing Amri pledging allegiance to IS "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Following the rampage, Germany threatened to withdraw foreign aid for countries that refuse to take back rejected asylum seekers.

The heightened state of alert in Germany caused by the market attack also led to its government deciding to deport two German-born terror suspects to Algeria in March.