Alalam - Germany
Fedi Ferjani, arrested nephew of Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri told AP:" We would like to know the truth about my uncle, a suspect and a dangerous terrorist. He has been reported as a terrorist, so why didn't they bring him back (to Tunisia)? The second thing is that I don't think that a dangerous suspect would leave his identification card and go away. I heard that he slept in Al Nour mosque, a place that he used go to regularly and that has been closed now. How did he manage to sleep in it on Tuesday without been captured by its security cameras, where is their security surveillance?
Fedi Ferjani, arrested nephew of Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri
Amri's fingerprints and wallet were found in a truck that plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday night, killing 12 people and injuring 56 others.
But his nephew Fedi, who himself was arrested later on Friday, said Amri may have had help in evading authorities after the attack.
After fleeing from Germany and through France, Amri was shot dead by Italian police in Milan. The Tunisian interior minister on Friday announced the arrest of Ferjani and two others suspected of belonging to the same extremist network as Amri.
"He said: “My uncle (Anis Amri) has been killed and they wanted to cover up the truth, they want to cover the people who are behind him, whether he has done this crime or not we want to know officially. Who involved him in this crime, and who are the people behind all this, who are those people? Those people worked together with German security 100 percent. He went to Italy, tell me how did he manage to go out while 16 countries were searching for him, how did he go from Germany to Italy?""
The ministry said in a statement that Amri, through an alias, had sent his nephew some money through the post office to join him in Europe and join the Abou Walaa network.
Amri claimed to be the network's emir. The ministry said the nephew told them he was in contact with Amri via Telegram's encrypted communications to avoid detection.
Fedi Ferjani, said:" They found him by coincidence and he was asked to show his ID card, as we have seen on TV channels, and then they knew it was him. Then he got killed, we want to know why this had to happen to him and why didn't anyone defend him? Where are the Tunisian authorities, he wanted to come back to his country. In 2011 on Tunisian radio they said that he wanted to come back to Tunisia after being imprisoned in Italy.
Ferjani told the ministry Amri had recruited him to “jihad” and asked him to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State group, which he did and sent it to Amri via Telegram.
The Tunisian prosecutor's office ordered all three held in pre-trial detention pending further investigation.
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