Berliners Call for More CCTV With 83 Percent Saying More Public Areas Should Be Covered by Cameras

Berliners have called for more CCTV cameras in the wake of the Christmas market terrorist attack.

A survey carried out following the murder of 11 people by Anis Amri showed 83 per cent of those in the German capital wanted extra surveillance in public areas.

It also found that 68 percent wanted a rethink on Germany’s immigration policy after Tunisian and ISIS fanatic Amri drove a 35-tonne lorry into shoppers on Monday.

Europe’s most wanted man was shot dead in Milan four days later, raising questions as to how he was able to evade detection despite crossing into France and Italy.

The research, carried out by the Emnid research institute on behalf of German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, also found 11 per cent would now avoid public events.

In contrast, 84 percent of those polled said they wouldn’t change their habits and behaviour in the wake of the attack.

In a show of defiance, five percent even claimed that they wanted to visit busier areas more frequently as a result of the mass killing.

CCTV footage of the attack has yet to be published, despite the atrocity taking place in one of the busiest public spaces in the city.

The use of surveillance cameras is considered to be much more restrictive than in similar Western countries due to its strict privacy laws.

However new legislation has been proposed to increase CCTV use in public places such as shopping centres, notably in the aftermath of July’s Munich shootings.

German authorities launched a Europe-wide manhunt for Amri on Wednesday. Two days later the rejected asylum seeker was killed by Italian police in Milan.

Italy’s Interior Minister Marco Minniti said that Amri had been fatally shot after firing at police who had stopped him for a routine identity check around 3am.

Amri had been missing since escaping after Monday’s attack in central Berlin. He had links to Italy, having arrived in the country from his native Tunisia in 2011.

Amri’s temporary residence permit for Germany and fingerprints were found in the cab of the truck he rammed into the packed Christmas market.

But in a development that stoked public anger, it emerged that German officials had already been investigating Amri.

Prosecutors in Berlin believed he was planning a burglary to raise funds to buy weapons, possibly to carry out an attack.

However, after trailing him for six months, they had to let the case drop due to a lack of evidence against him – they thought he was only a small-time drug dealer.

Questions were also raised on Friday about how Amri managed to flee Germany, evading the Europe-wide manhunt and making it all the way to Italy.

He is believed to have travelled at least part of the route by train, passing through France. He had no phone on him and only a few hundred euros.

Security sources believe Amri was radicalised during his time in prison. He arrived in Germany in July 2015 and applied for asylum, which was rejected in June.

However, his deportation became bogged down in red tape as Tunisia denied he was a citizen.

Just an hour after the carnage, the police declared they had a chief suspect already in custody, a Pakistani asylum seeker.

Police released him 24 hours later, after failing to find evidence of his involvement. The mix-up gave Amri another 30 hours to flee.

After the bloody assault, the Islamic State-linked Amaq news agency hailed Amri as a ‘soldier’ of the group.

After Amri was shot dead, ISIS released a video in which he is shown pledging allegiance to group chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Tunisia said it had arrested Amri’s nephew and two other men who were members of a ‘terrorist cell’. It made no direct link between the trio and the Berlin attack.

The truck used to carry out the attack belonged to Polish driver Lukasz Urban, who was heading to Berlin to deliver steel beams from Italy.

But the delivery was put off until the following day, so he went to park his Polish-registered lorry in an industrial zone in the northwest of the city.

Police found Urban, shot dead, in the passenger seat of the truck’s cab.

According to Urban’s cousin Ariel Zurawski, who was shown photos of the body, the 37-year-old had a stab wound and ‘his face was bloodied and swollen’.

Eleven other people were also killed, seven of them German nationals. The others came from Czech Republic, Italy, Israel and Ukraine.