The investigation into how the German Christmas market attack happened has devolved into bickering and finger-pointing, with newspapers revealing that a gap in security the size of a car was known about several weeks ago. It became clear.
A representative of Magdeburg's municipal corporation, which runs the annual Christmas market, wrote a letter to local police three weeks before the December attack pointing out problems, according to a leak seen by police. Email is volksstimme newspaper claims. The publication notes that the email refers to a security plan created for the Christmas market, as German authorities are well aware that the annual festival is a prominent target for attacks. It is stated that the agreement was not complied with.
It refers to a safety plan that allows emergency vehicle access to the market center to allow access for police, ambulances and fire trucks in the event of an incident, and otherwise by parked police vehicles. These routes need to be closed, council officials said. Those police vehicles are often absent.
They reportedly wrote: “Vehicles are sometimes parked in the wrong spots in the Hult Street area. … I politely spoke to my colleagues and they said they had no information about operations here.”
There was no response to this email. Additionally, it is stated that the market's security concept was inspected before the event, which found that there were car-sized gaps between the so-called “diversity barriers” surrounding the venue, which were not secured by thick steel chains. No other deficiencies were pointed out. volksstimme “When the market opened, there was a large gap between the entrance and the concrete fence that was supposed to protect the evacuation route.”
In this incident, access to the market was so wide open that the attackers entered the market from one end and were able to access it from the other end without being stopped, on Hart Street, which was mentioned in the leaked email. I was able to come straight off the edge. He killed five people and injured over 200 others, dozens of them seriously.
This email may seem terrible, but the German built memo Magdeburg police officials completely denied responsibility for the Christmas market, and the newspaper characterized the situation as “everyone blaming each other.”
A police spokesperson said: built: “The organizer is basically responsible for the security of the Christmas market,'' and if the city wants to control access to the market with four emergency access points, it could lock them instead of relying on the police. He said a security gate should have been installed.
As previously reported, even though police are involved in blocking these entrances, it is part of a plan agreed to by police, and their own security documents state that “mobile police fencing” is part of the plan. It was stated that it was installed.
Police protests that they are innocent in this case appear to have already been dismissed as potentially unfounded, but the local state government has already accused local forces and markets of failing to prevent an avoidable attack. Criminal charges have been filed against the organizers. .
As previously reported for the Magdeburg attack:
Last week, a man drove a high-performance BMW car through a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany, killing five people, including a nine-year-old boy and four adult women. A 50-year-old male suspect, described as a former Muslim with a history of making threats against Germany, is in police custody.
Ensuring safety at Christmas markets has been a hot topic in Germany for many years, ever since the 2016 Berlin attack in which Tunisian “refugee” Anis Amri drove a stolen truck at high speed and plowed into a crowd at the city's Christmas market. are. In fact, Western intelligence agencies have known for some time that the Islamic State group was pressuring European operatives to specifically target Christmas events and markets. A month before the incident, American tourists were advised to avoid crowded places during the festive season due to the threat from ISIS.
A special committee on the attack will meet today at the German Ministry of the Interior. Participants included the Federal Minister of the Interior, the Chief of the Federal Criminal Police, the Deputy Chief of the Federal Political Police, and the Mayor of Magdeburg.
