Italian minister: Berlin truck attacker ‘lone wolf’ when on run in Italy

The Italian interior minister says the prime suspect in a deadly terrorist attack in the German capital moved like a “lone wolf” while at large in Italy.

The remarks by Marco Minniti to reporters on Friday was in keeping with the findings of investigators so far that Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, lacked any significant contacts in Italy as he fled.

Minniti said that "from when he arrived in Italy, Amri moved like a lone wolf."

Amri had spent three and a half years behind bars in Sicily before ending up in Germany after Italy tried unsuccessfully to expel him to Tunisia following his 2105 release from prison.

He plowed a hijacked truck into a crowd shopping at a Christmas market in the German capital of Berlin on December 19, killing 12 people. Amri was at large for four days before he was shot dead by police in Milan.

Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Amri was a follower. In a video message released after the attack, the Tunisian had pledged allegiance to the Takfiri terrorist group mainly operating in Syria and Iraq.

Sources close to the investigation said on Wednesday that Amri had traveled by bus from the Netherlands to France before heading to Italy. Investigators are trying to understand how the Tunisian had managed to leave Berlin and traverse most of Germany to reach the Netherlands.

Following the deadly attack, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared plans to hasten the expulsion of rejected asylum seekers.

A survey in Germany indicated that support for the country’s anti-refugee AfD party surged after the truck attack. According to the poll, conducted by the Insa institute for the local Bild daily, the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party registered a 2.5-point climb to 15.5 percent approval rating compared to the previous week.

This is while Merkel’s Christian Democrats lost 1.5 percentage points to hit 31.5 percent, while the Social Democrats, the ruling coalition’s junior partners, lost one point to hit 20.5 percent.

In the immediate aftermath of Berlin’s terror attack, the AfD blamed Merkel's liberal border policy, under which more than a million refugees entered the European nation in 2015.

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