Italian police have announced the arrest of an Algerian man who “probably” gave Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri a forged document he used to travel from Italy to Germany.

The suspect, identified with the initials C.M.S., was apprehended in Naples in April, as part of an investigation that led to seven more arrests and which was revealed only on Friday.

Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker, arrived in Italy with a migrant boat in 2011 and is thought to have become radicalized in Italian jails before finding his way to Germany.

On Dec. 19, 2016, he drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, leaving 12 people dead before going on the run across several European countries.

He arrived in Sesto San Giovanni, a suburb of Milan, four days after the attack, where he was intercepted by chance by a police patrol, and shot dead. He was 24 years old.

In a statement, Italian police said that five months before the attack, on July 30, 2016, Amri was checked on a coach on the Berlin-Zurich route, where he showed a forged Italian identity card.

C.M.S. is believed to have supplied it to him. The Algerian man was part of a network of document forgers based in Naples that was dismantled with seven other arrests.

Eleven more people were placed under investigation. The suspects face charges of criminal association for document forgery and abetting illegal immigration linked to international terrorism.

A European arrest warrant issued by France was already pending for C.M.S, Italian police said. He was wanted for trading counterfeit banknotes.

 

NAN