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Daesh
reinvidicou atentado de Berlim, mas não se sabe quem foi o autor
Polícia
libertou o suspeito detido por falta de provas. Refugiados na
Alemanha temem represálias, por causa do clima de suspeição.
Clara Barata
CLARA BARATA 20 de
Dezembro de 2016, 21:18
Dor e interrogações.
Foi assim que Berlim ficou, 24 horas depois de um camião ter
avançado sobre um mercado de Natal, esmagando quem apanhou pela
frente – pelo menos 12 pessoas morreram, 48 ficaram feridas, 14
delas com gravidade. A polícia alemã teve de libertar o único
suspeito detido, um refugiado paquistanês, por falta de provas. O
verdadeiro autor do atentado, que foi reclamado pelo Daesh, está
ainda à solta.
Naved B., de 23
anos, foi capturado pouco depois de o camião ter investido contra o
mercado de Natal da praça Breitscheid, junto à igreja memorial
Kaiser Wilhelm, meio em ruína desde a II Guerra Mundial, tal como a
deixaram os bombardeamentos dos Aliados, para recordar esses tempos
de cólera. Mas a polícia admitiu desde cedo que podia não ter o
homem certo – que, aliás, dizia ser inocente.
As testemunhas que
tinham visto o condutor sair do camião afinal não o tinham mantido
sempre debaixo de olho. E, diz a revista Spiegel, uma vez que a
polícia está a considerar que o condutor polaco do camião foi
morto a tiro, esperava encontrar vestígios de pólvora na roupa ou
nas mãos do suspeito – o que não se verificou. “As análises
forenses até agora não provaram a presença do suspeito durante os
crimes na cabina do camião”, disse o Procurador Federal, em
comunicado.
Ao fim do dia, a
agência de propaganda do Daesh reivindicou o ataque. O autor “é
um soldado do Estado Islâmico e executou a operação em resposta
aos apelos de escolher alvos nos países da coligação” que
combate a organização no Iraque e na Síria. No entanto, parece
tratar-se de uma reivindicação oportunista e não de um atentado
organizado pelo Daesh.
Por toda a Europa, a
segurança foi reforçada nos típicos mercados de Natal, e nos
locais onde se juntam muitas pessoas. “Mas não se podem
transformar estes mercados em fortalezas”, disse Klaus Kandt, o
dirigente máximo da polícia estadual berlinense. “Nunca
conseguiremos eliminar completamente o risco.”
O condutor polaco do
camião chegou à capital alemã e falou com a sua mulher pelas 15h
de segunda-feira, segundo revelam os dados do GPS, disse o seu primo
e proprietário da empresa para a qual trabalhava, Ariel Zurawski.
“Às 15h45 pode-se ver o camião a andar para trás e para a
frente, como se alguém estivesse a aprender a conduzi-lo. Percebi
que havia alguma coisa errada”, disse, citado pela Reuters.
Se se confirmasse
que um refugiado recente – Naved B. tinha chegado à Alemanha no
fim do ano de 2015 – era o autor do atentado, ia acontecer algo
muito feio, avisou a chanceler alemã. “Seria algo particularmente
difícil de suportar para nós”, afirmou Angela Merkel. “Seria
especialmente repugnante para muitos alemães que diariamente se
envolvem na ajuda aos refugiados, e contra as muitas pessoas que
precisam mesmo da nossa protecção e tentam integrar-se no nosso
país”, declarou a chanceler, que ao fim do dia se juntou à missa
em memória das vítimas, na igreja de Kaiser Wilhelm, junto ao local
do atentado.
O ministro do
Interior, Thomas de Maiziére, reiterou à televisão ZDF a convicção
de que se trata de um atentado terrorista – mas não é possível
ainda compreender quais as suas motivações políticas. Aliás, o
mesmo aconteceu com o ataque de Nice, em que o então ministro do
Interior francês, Bernard Cazeneuve, disse que o homem que matou 86
pessoas com um camião, que tinha alguns problemas de saúde mental,
se radicalizou de forma “extremamente rápida”.
O receio é o de que
este ataque marque o momento decisivo da viragem da política de
“boas vindas” alemã em relação aos refugiados – ainda que o
suspeito tenha sido libertado. “Se o culpado for um refugiado, a
política de ‘portas abertas’ de Merkel terá uma mudança
decisiva”, escreveu no Guardian Josef Joffe, director do semanário
alemão Die Zeit.
Em 2015, cerca de
800 mil refugiados do Médio Oriente entraram na Alemanha, graças a
um gesto de boa vontade com origem no passado negro do país – “um
acto de redenção histórica” do nazismo, chama-lhe Joffe. Mas
esse desejo de expiação começa a fraquejar, e começam a ser
impostos limites, que tendem a agravar-se com os receios do
terrorismo. “A Alemanha, que até agora tem tido sorte, juntou-se
agora ao clube de alvos do terrorismo no Ocidente”, escreveu o
director do Die Zeit.
Angela Merkel, o
alvo virtual
Os refugiados na
Alemanha percebem que correm perigo, pelo ódio que este ataque está
já a suscitar, nas redes sociais e não só. Por exemplo, um grupo
de extrema-direita quer fazer uma manifestação quarta-feira a
começar no Zoo, perto do local do atentado, sob o lema "Fechem
as fronteiras – sangue nas mãos de Merkel", diz o jornal
Berliner Zeitung.
“Estamos
preocupados com a forma como os alemães vão olhar para nós depois
deste atentado”, disse ao Guardian Ibrahim Sufi, um sírio de 26
anos. “Não temos nada a ver com este crime”, disse Ammar Wazzaz,
outro refugiado sírio, de 45 anos, de Idlib. “Estamos muito gratos
à Alemanha.”
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Deadly
attack on German soil is worst fear for Angela Merkel
German
chancellor is again under fire from political opponents who lay the
blame for Berlin attack on her refugee strategy
Philip Oltermann in
Berlin
@philipoltermann
Tuesday 20 December
2016 19.52 GMT
Angela Merkel has
vowed she will not allow Germany to be “paralysed by fear” after
rightwing populist politicians rushed to blame the chancellor and her
refugee policies for Monday evening’s deadly truck attack on a
Berlin Christmas market.
Speaking at her
chancellery on Tuesday morning, Merkel was quick to sketch out a
worst-case scenario – unusually for a politician who prefers to
deal in pragmatic solutions.
“Given our current
information, we have to assume we are dealing with a terrorist
attack,” she told reporters. But she added: “We do not want to
live paralysed by the fear of evil. Even if it is difficult in these
hours, we will find the strength for the life we want to live in
Germany – free, together and open.”
Political opponents
rejected her plea for unity, renewing their criticism of her refugee
strategy and laying the blame for the attack unambiguously at her
door.
“The environment
in which such acts can spread was carelessly and systematically
imported over the past one and a half years,” said Frauke Petry,
leader of the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). “It
was not an isolated incident and it won’t be the last.”
Petry’s partner,
MEP Marcus Pretzell, posted a message on Twitter for what he called
the “Let’s-wait-and-see brigade” less than an hour after the
attack: “This is what happens when you wait and see”.
Horst Seehofer, the
leader of Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social
Union, criticised her policies in more diplomatic but no less
forceful terms: “We owe it to the victims, to those affected and to
the whole population to rethink our immigration and security policy
and to change it.”
When she appeared
before the television cameras on Tuesday morning, Merkel did not shy
away from the possible ramifications of the attacker being identified
as a refugee or migrant. “I know that it would be particularly hard
to bear for all of us if it was confirmed that a person committed
this crime who asked for protection and asylum in Germany,” she
said.
That confirmation
appeared to follow soon after the end of her press conference, only
to be withdrawn just a couple of hours later.
As Merkel, together
with the foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and Berlin’s
mayor, Michael Müller, were laying down flowers at the site where
the truck had crashed into the side of a Christmas market, the chief
of Berlin’s police admitted it was unclear whether the suspect they
had arrested shortly after the attack was indeed the driver behind
the deadly rampage. Later, the man – a 23-year-old Pakistani
citizen who had arrived in Germany on 31 December 2015 – was
released.
The political
significance of Monday night’s tragedy, however, had by then been
made clear.
At the end of a year
in which Merkel has seen some of her closest allies on the
international stage succumb to populist anger – including US
President Barack Obama, David Cameron in Britain, François Hollande
in France and Matteo Renzi in Italy – and just before the start of
a year in which she is determined to avoid a similar fate, a deadly
attack on German soil was precisely what her supporters feared most.
Whatever the ongoing
investigations into the perpetrator’s motives reveal, the German
chancellor will be faced with part of her electorate asking if the
tragedy came about as a direct result of her policy decisions last
year, when Merkel kept open Germany’s borders for refugees stranded
in Hungary.
Reactions to the
Berlin attack have already shown the extent to which an answer to
that question is ideological. Hajo Funke, a politics professor at
Berlin’s Free University, suggested that Merkel would get little
political mileage out of atoning for past decisions. “Germany’s
voters will choose politicians based on whether they have workable
political answers, not empty promises,” he said. “The AfD has no
actual solutions to the terrorist problem and 90% of the population
sees that.”
Merkel’s approval
ratings dropped considerably after two terrorist attacks in southern
Germany in the summer, but recently recovered to the levels the
chancellor enjoyed before the start of the refugee crisis.
While recent polls
have put Petry’s party on 12-13%, Funke argued that the “base of
political power” in Germany’s coalition-based political system
would continue to lie with Merkel’s Christian Democrats, currently
on 33-36%, the centre-left Social Democrats (21-23%) and the Green
party (10-11%).
Yet in the wake of
Monday’s attack, even shoring up that base of support will require
Merkel to do more to assure her electorate that she can guarantee
their safety. At the Christian Democrats’ conference earlier this
month, it was clear that a party that once stood faithfully behind
its leader now contained a backbench cabal agitating for a rightward
lurch.
Merkel has
repeatedly shown that she is less averse to populist gestures on a
domestic stage than her international admirers give her credit for:
since September 2015, her government has gradually restricted the
list of countries whose citizens can rightfully claim asylum in
Germany, a point underlined by a series of high-profile deportations
to Afghanistan that commenced last week.
Last month, the
German chancellor even endorsed her party’s proposal for a ban of
the full facial veil. She placed a caveat on her demand in
characteristic style with the phrase “wherever it is legally
possible” – a move echoed on Tuesday when she vowed that the
perpetrator of the Berlin truck attack would be punished “as
severely as our laws demand”.
Even in the centre
of the political spectrum, the room for manoeuvre is not limitless,
however.
Advertisement
After Monday’s
attack, and following a high-profile hunt for a man filmed kicking a
young woman down a flight of stairs at a Berlin metro station, there
may be an opportunity for Merkel to take a more hawkish stance on the
use of CCTV surveillance in public space, traditionally a sensitive
issue in privacy-conscious Germany.
But after almost two
years of a highly polemicised political debate over the refugee
crisis, some policy avenues are now permanently closed to the
chancellor.
A set upper limit on
the number of refugees who can enter the country – which many in
her party believe would have reassured traditional conservatives –
is out of the question because it would amount to a climbdown in her
ongoing standoff with Seehofer and thus a serious loss of face.
Merkel has gone way
beyond the point where she can ever win back members of the AfD and
their dyed-in-the-wool supporters. Arguably she does not need to, but
a loss of political authority, and a party that tacks right while she
steers left, could fatally undermine her campaign for a fourth term
in next year’s elections.
Berlin
attack exposes Angela Merkel’s right flank
As
a year ago after the mass assaults in Cologne, a public outrage
focuses criticism on the German chancellor’s open door migration
policy.
By JANOSCH
DELCKER 12/20/16, 8:29 PM CET Updated 12/20/16, 8:31 PM CET
BERLIN — As flags
on government buildings across Germany hang at half-mast in homage to
the victims of Berlin’s Christmas market attack, Angela Merkel’s
opponents aren’t waiting to capitalize on the tragedy to weaken the
62-year-old chancellor’s 2017 re-election campaign.
With the perpetrator
apparently still on the run, after police released the Pakistani
asylum-seeker they arrested immediately after the attack that killed
12 people and injured 48, Merkel already faces accusations that her
refugee policy put Germany in mortal danger.
“We must not be
under any illusion. The environment for such deeds was imported
negligently and systematically throughout the last year and a half,”
said Frauke Petry, leader of the far-right party Alternative für
Deutschland (AfD).
By leveraging public
anger at Merkel’s decision in autumn 2015 to grant safe passage to
refugees stranded in Hungary, the AfD has seen its support in
opinion polls rise from 4 percent in August 2015 to around 12 percent
now. Following success in regional elections — it overtook Merkel’s
conservatives in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state in September — the
anti-immigrant party is likely to enter the Bundestag, parliament’s
lower house, in the fall.
Shortly before
Monday’s attack in Berlin, German news agency DPA reported that the
AfD leadership had chosen a campaign strategy that would focus on the
concerns of ordinary people via what an internal document described
as “carefully planned provocations.” It hopes to trigger nervous
reactions from its rivals, and the more they try to stigmatize the
party, ”the more positive this will prove for the party’s
profile,” the DPA report quoted the document.
‘Heavy artillery’
In retrospect, it
sounds like the blueprint for the reaction of Marcus Pretzell, the
AfD’s candidate in next year’s regional election in the state of
North Rhine-Westphalia, to Monday’s attack. Moments after the news
broke, he tweeted: “These are Merkel’s dead.”
Ralf Stegner, deputy
leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), responded by accusing Pretzell
and his party of attempting to capitalize politically on the attack.
It was a “disgusting political exploitation of this tragedy” when
everyone should be showing “respect for the victims,” he wrote on
Twitter.
The fact that it was
the SPD — currently Merkel’s coalition allies, but which will
challenge her for the chancellorship next year — that defended the
chancellor is symptomatic of the problem she was already going to
face in the campaign: Her welcoming attitude to the refugees won her
new admirers among German center-left supporters but alienated her
from some in the conservative wing of her own Christian Democrats
(CDU) and the allied Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU).
“We owe it to the
victims, those who were affected [by the attack] and the entire
population that we should now think over and adjust our entire
migration and security policy,” said Bavarian state premier and CSU
leader Horst Seehofer on Tuesday morning, adding that he would
discuss with the Bavarian state government the “possible
implications and suggestions for [Merkel’s] federal government.”
So far, Seehofer’s
repeated criticism of Merkel’s refugee policy have failed to make a
lasting dent in her popularity. Now in her third term, her personal
approval ratings are close to 60 percent despite waves of outrage to
refugee-related events such the mass sexual assaults on women in
Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015, or the rape and murder of a college
student in Freiburg in October, for which an Afghan asylum seeker was
arrested.
Demonstrating her
refusal to adopt the tone and language of the AfD to neutralize them
as a political threat, Merkel told German TV earlier this month that
if the Freiburg attacker turns out to be an Afghan refugee, he should
be condemned “just like with any other murderer … But that
shouldn’t be combined with a rejection of an entire group.”
Tackling the same
issue head-on at her first statement in response to Monday’s
atrocity, the chancellor — dressed in black — said: “We must
assume at the current time that it was a terrorist attack.” She
added: “I know that it would be particularly difficult for all of
us to bear if it is confirmed that this deed was carried out by a
person who sought protection and asylum in Germany.”
Sure enough, shortly
afterwards German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said the man
arrested on suspicion of carrying out Monday’s attack was a
23-year-old Pakistani who had applied for asylum in Germany. In a
detail that could potentially be embarrassing for German authorities,
the minister said immigration authorities had not been able to
question the man about his asylum request because there was nobody
who could provide interpretation into German from the man’s
language, Balochi.
A few hours later,
after media reports that German police believed they may have
arrested the wrong man, federal prosecutor Peter Frank said police
didn’t know for sure whether the man in police custody really was
responsible, and that investigators should “get used to the idea
that the suspect possibly isn’t the criminal or doesn’t belong to
the criminal group.” Later in the day, authorities said the
Pakistani man had been released.
Such confusion is
likely to increase the pressure on Merkel to toughen up security
measures. A taste of things to come came from the interior minister
for the state of Saarland, the CDU’s Klaus Bouillon, who said in a
radio interview that Berlin was in a state of war “even though some
people, who always only want to see the good, don’t want to see
this.” From now on, he said, police should use “heavy artillery”
if necessary.
Hortense Goulard
contributed reporting.
Germany's
Nightmare, Merkel's Nightmare
The
attack on Berlin has the potential for shaking up German politics.
Angela Merkel said what she needed to say, but her task of reuniting
the country ahead of next fall's general election just became more
difficult.
By Severin Weiland
and Philipp Wittrock
December 20, 2016
07:13 PM
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel is in crisis mode. Again. But this time, it hurts worse
than before and has shaken the entire country. The attacks over the
summer in Würzburg and Ansbach were merely harbingers of Monday
night's bloodbath. Now, 12 people are dead and dozens more wounded
after an attacker drove a semi-truck into a Christmas market in the
heart of Berlin.
Merkel was fully
aware that something like Monday's night's attack could happen here
too -- indeed, that it was almost inevitable. But that hasn't
mitigated the shock. "This is a difficult day," the
chancellor said. The country, she went on, is "united in deep
mourning."
When Merkel read her
statement on Tuesday regarding the events of the previous evening,
she said what she had to say in such a situation. She expressed her
sympathy for the victims and their families, thanked the
first-responders for their work, conveyed faith in the work of the
investigators and announced that the perpetrators would be punished
accordingly. And she promised: "We will find strength for the
life we want to live in Germany -- free, united and open."
They are words that
gave voice to her shock and dismay. But also to the determination to
confront terror.
'Particularly
Repulsive'
But even as she was
making her statement, the chancellor was fully aware that the correct
tone, excellent police work and the steadfastness of liberal values
would not be enough to contain the crisis. That helps explain why she
also conveyed a political message during her five-minute appearance.
It would, she said,
be "particularly difficult for all of us to tolerate" a
situation in which the perpetrator had come to Germany as a refugee."
It would be, she continued, "particularly repulsive with respect
to the many, many Germans who are engaged daily in providing
assistance to refugees and with respect to the many people who really
need our protection and who are doing their best to integrate."
As she was speaking,
it wasn't yet known that police had begun doubting whether the man
they had arrested on Monday night was actually involved in the
attack. The man, who apparently came to Germany as a refugee from
Pakistan roughly one year ago, had been arrested not far from the
site of the attack. Investigators had hoped that they had captured
the driver of the truck.
Merkel's message was
an entreaty to Germans to avoid casting an eye of blanket suspicion
on all refugees in the country. She is well aware of the deep divides
in German society and she is concerned that this attack might poison
the atmosphere even further, a development which could make it all
the more difficult for her to win re-election in fall 2017.
And her message was
also aimed at those fellow conservative politicians who have always
been critical of her refugee policies. First and foremost Horst
Seehofer, the combative governor of Bavaria who also leads the
Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's
Christian Democrats (CDU). Even before Merkel delivered her statement
in Berlin, the Bavarian cabinet met in Munich. Seehofer, it was
clear, had been deeply affected by the attack in the German capital
and dark rings circled his eyes.
Fight on the Right
What Seehofer then
said into the journalists' cameras sounded like yet another
declaration of war against Merkel. "We owe it to the victims,
their families and the entire populace to rethink and readjust our
entire immigration and security policies." When Seehofer says
"our policies," he really means those of the chancellor.
Seehofer has been
fighting for months against Merkel's political course in the refugee
crisis. He isn't just concerned about holding onto power in Bavaria,
he is also worried about growing political competition on the right
wing in the form of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Overnight, the AfD sought to gain momentum from the attack by
directly blaming Merkel's policies for making it possible in the
first place and with derisive comments in social networks.
Recently, the CDU
and the CSU had been trying to patch up their relationship. A joint
meeting of party leaders is currently scheduled for the beginning of
February at which the Bavarian sister party is slated to announce its
official support for Merkel's new candidacy for the Chancellery. But
the attack could thwart these plans if Seehofer decides that recent
reforms to tighten the country's asylum laws don't go far enough.
But even members of
Merkel's CDU are agitated. Take Klaus Bouillon, the CDU interior
minister for the state of Saarland, who first spoke of a "state
of war" in describing Monday's attack and later tried to
backpedal. "I will avoid using the term war in the future,"
he said, distancing himself from his own remarks. "It's
terrorism."
'Not the Day for
Consequences'
Seehofer's immediate
call for political consequences following the attack did not go over
well in Berlin. Thomas de Maizière, the interior minister, provided
an update on the investigation's progress on Tuesday and the CDU
politician appeared to be choosing his words very carefully while
doing so. "Let's not retreat," de Maizìere said in an
appeal to the populace. "Don't let them control our lives with
fear."
When asked for his
response to Seehofer's demand, the interior minister grew taciturn.
He pointed out that he would be visiting the scene of the attack
later in the day together with the chancellor and the foreign
minister and that he would be attending a worship service afterward.
"Today," he said, "is not the day to be talking about
consequences."
Later in the day, de
Maizière joined Merkel and her SPD colleague Frank Walter Steinmeier
as they laid white roses at a make-shift memorial to the victims. As
he did so, Seehofer and his government ministers in Bavaria prepared
to call a special meeting of the cabinet Tuesday afternoon. The issue
to be discussed: Germany's security and refugee policies.
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